Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health: Will the minister please outline to the House how the Morrison government's stable and certain economic management allows for record investment in public hospitals and for important medical programs, such as the Zero Childhood Cancer initiative, and is the Minister aware of any alternative approaches?

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

I want to thank the member for Goldstein. He's been a strong supporter of paediatric cancer initiatives, such as the Robert Connor Dawes Foundation and, throughout his career, he's also recognised that, in order to fund hospitals and medicines and medical research, it's critical to have a strong economy. The equation works that if there are strong investment circumstances—appropriate taxation circumstances, such as franking credits—investments will be made. That helps create employment, 36 months of continuous employment, helps improve the budget circumstance, and, in turn, allows for investment in hospitals and medical research.

In particular, in our hospitals, what we have seen is a pathway to a doubling of Commonwealth investment in hospital expenditure in Australia. We are going from $13 billion in the year before we came to office to, over this term of government, $23, $24, $25 and $26 billion per annum, a doubling of annual hospital investment. But it goes further than that. Over the course of the next five-year period, under the National Health Reform Agreement, we will see an increase of $31 billion from $100 billion to $131 billion and all this will result in extra services, extra supports, extra treatments, which will make a profound difference in essential services to Australian families.

One of the other areas that we are able to invest in is medical research. Within that medical research area there is no more important program than the Zero Childhood Cancer initiative. This is absolutely critical. The $25 million into a program which did not previously exist allows young children who have a less than 30 per cent survival rate for cancer to have their DNA sequenced. To date, over 250 children have had their DNA sequenced. Most significantly, of those 250 children, almost three-quarters have had a discovery made which allows for a novel treatment, a treatment which would otherwise never have been contemplated—because of a genetic mutation or other discovery. Of that first group of children to be given that novel treatment, 60 per cent have had a partial or complete remission. One of those children is, Kaylee, a 14-year-old girl from New South Wales. She has a neuroblastoma that had been given all of the conventional treatments, and there was very little hope given at that point. She had her DNA sequenced under the Zero Childhood Cancer initiative and, as a consequence, she was given a novel treatment. I'm delighted to inform the House that, after 17 days, she was in remission and back at school.