Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is also to the Minister for Health. Will the minister please outline to the House how a stronger economy enables the government to subsidise new medicines, including those that will improve the lives of more than half a million Australian patients who have trouble breathing because of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease? How does the government's management of the budget allow this to happen in comparison with previous approaches?

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Petrie, who comes to this place as a small business owner and operator—pest control; he can spot a cockroach at 30 paces. One of the things he learned was that, in order to grow a small business, you need a plan and you need to work hard. In order to grow an economy, you need a plan and you need to work hard. In order to have that plan, you need to work on competitiveness to allow your businesses to flourish. That's what allows one million jobs to be created and that's what allows a government to guarantee essential services, and that's exactly what this government is doing. That's how we came to be able to provide record funding for Medicare—$4.8 billion of additional funding in the last budget; record funding for hospitals—an additional $30 billion over the new hospital funding agreement; record funding for aged care—up by $1 billion; and record funding for mental health—up $338 million. Importantly though, it also means we can provide record funding for new medicines, with an ironclad guarantee that, if the PBAC recommends it, we will list the new medicines.

On the weekend I was privileged to be able to announce on behalf of the government that new medicines would be listed for conditions such as type 2 diabetes, ulcerative colitis, renal cancer and, in particular, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The two things that most people know most well in this case are emphysema and other related breathing diseases. We have been able to help 600,000 Australians access a simple, single new medicine that would otherwise not have been available, that would have been out of the reach of the vast majority of Australians. Putting medicine for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease on the PBS is a very important thing.

I was also asked if there are alternatives. Yes, there are. We hear from the Leader of the Opposition that this is just the ordinary course of business for government. It's not, because that hasn't always been the case. When Labor were in government they deliberately denied seven medicines being listed on the PBS, including Symbicort. What is Symbicort for? Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. In the end that's the difference between the two approaches to government. On that side they can't manage the economy and, therefore, they can't manage health. They can't commit to delivering what people need. On this side we manage the economy and we deliver the essential services. (Time expired)