Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health. Will the minister please update the House on how a stronger economy enables the government to invest in life saving drugs and the mental and physical health of older Australians?

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

I want to thank the member for Ryan, who's been a great advocate for pensioners, for seniors, in her electorate and every electorate in terms of protecting them and planning for their futures. In particular, one of the things that she is absolutely right about is that you do need a strong economy in order to be able to deliver these services. We know this because in the 2011 budget there was a period when, due to fiscal circumstances, the then government deferred the listing of seven critical medicines.

One of those medicines was Symbicort, a medicine directed primarily at older Australians, for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. That medicine was deferred because of fiscal circumstances in the budget paper of that year. I am pleased to inform the House that only very recently this government listed Trelegy, directed primarily at older Australians, for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It's one of over 1,900 medicines which have now been listed or amended on the watch of this government, which we've been able to do precisely because of the strong economy.

One of the other things that the member raises is what other medicines might we have helped with. I'm very pleased that we've been able to deliver a trivalent vaccine for flu. As a result of that new, stronger vaccine and also higher rates of vaccination and differences in this year's flu as well as the incredible work of so many of our health and medical workers, we've seen a drop in over 65s who have been diagnosed with tested flu to this stage of the year from 29,000 to 4,000 and perhaps, most significantly, a reduction to the end of August in those who have lost their lives from flu from 610 Australians to 38 Australians. Overwhelmingly, those are older Australians whose lives have been saved and protected.

At the same time, we've seen an almost 50 per cent increase in funding under this government compared with 2012-13 for aged care. I think that's a critical thing. That's allowed us, in this budget, to add $100 million for mental health for older Australians inside nursing homes and within the community—$82 million for those within nursing homes to have better mental health care and $20 million for those within the community to have better access to mental health nurses and other support. Outside of that, there's an extra $50 million to assist older Australians with rehabilitation and physical activity for their physical health. None of these things could be possible, as we saw from the 2011-12 budget, without a strong economy, without the ability to pay for it and, ultimately, without the ability to protect and to plan for our senior Australians.