Trent Zimmerman (North Sydney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Sport, I present the committee's report entitled The new frontierdelivering better health for all Australians: inquiry into approval processes for new drugs and novel medical technologies in Australia, together with the minutes of proceedings.

Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).

by leave—The report is quite a weighty tome. Over the past 18 months, many Australians have observed with awe and admiration the incredible work of medical scientists in finding vaccines and new treatments to a virus that has taken so many lives or impacted the health of millions of people around the world. Many of the innovations and medical understandings developed during the COVID-19 pandemic will have long-term benefits for health treatments for other conditions beyond COVID-19. These innovations reflect the new frontier of medicine, which is giving many hope for better treatments and technologies for conditions ranging from cancers to rare diseases. At its forefront is the development of personalised, or precision, medicine, which is being delivered as our understanding of fields like genomics grows. This report examines the opportunities to deliver better health care for Australians through our regulatory and health technology assessment process for both medicines and technologies.

Australia has long prided itself on having one of the world's best health systems. By any measure, we do. However, no nation and no health system can rest on its laurels. With innovation happening at a fast pace, governments at both the state and federal level have a duty to ensure that Australians continue to have access quickly to medicines and medical technologies and that our health systems facilitate that outcome rather than hinder it. Medical innovation has grown exponentially in recent years, and pharmaceutical and medtech companies are eager to bring new medicines and devices to market as efficiently as possible. The committee heard from clinical experts and patient groups and their families, who urged us to support a more flexible system to provide for timely access to the latest medicines, devices and treatments.

One of the challenges facing the existing system is the trend towards delivering precision medicine to patients. Precision medicine is an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variabilities in genes, environment and lifestyle for each and every person. This offers great hope for patients with a broad spectrum of conditions and diseases, including patients with rare diseases. However, these developments were not envisaged when the current regulatory and reimbursement system was designed and legislated many years ago. The committee recommends the creation of a centre for precision medicine and rare disease within the Department of Health to provide advice on research priorities, education and training for clinicians and patients and the development of a comprehensive horizon scanning unit for new medicines and novel medical technologies. The committee also recommends that a new pathway for cell and gene therapy be established to simplify the health technology assessment processes.

The committee heard from patients and their families about the need for more patient involvement in the approvals decision-making process for new drugs and novel medical technologies. Patients do have a crucial perspective on what treatments work best for them, including important lifestyle benefits, but this has traditionally not been given enough attention within the regulatory system. The committee recommends reforms that will strengthen the central role that patients should have in that assessment process. The committee heard that patients and clinicians were frustrated that some medicines and technologies are available overseas but not yet in Australia, with companies seemingly deciding not to sell their products in Australia for commercial reasons. This is a particular issue that arises for orphan drugs and drugs for rare diseases. The committee therefore recommends changes to encourage companies to enter the Australian market with their products and technologies. This includes changes to the fee structure for applications to the health technology process, particularly for orphan drugs and smaller companies, including Australian startups. The approval processes for new medicines and novel medical technologies are very complex, and this report discusses different ways to streamline them to provide better and faster patient access to treatments. One example of this is the Life Saving Drugs Program for treatments for very rare diseases, which, despite urgent patient need, currently requires a lengthy two-step application process. The committee recommends this process be streamlined into a one-step process.

Clinical trials are another area where Australia has considerably strong comparative advantages. However, the committee has recommended changes to streamline the system even further to ensure Australia is an attractive location for clinical trials. This includes the immediate harmonisation of ethics and governance approvals into one online platform and the establishment of a national registry.

It was clear to the committee that there was a great deal of momentum behind the push to improve the regulatory and reimbursement system—not just a general desire for change but a wealth of ideas for reform and a willingness to make the efforts and compromises necessary to implement them. The committee hopes that this report catches those ideas and paves the way for the improvements needed to provide Australians with the best possible health care now and into the future. I have only touched on a few of our recommendations today. There are many more that I hope the government considers.

I want to thank everyone who took the time to give evidence to this inquiry—most particularly, all the patients and their families. Their testimony was often moving and exceptionally persuasive. I also want to thank my fellow committee members for their close engagement and their knowledgeable contributions to this inquiry. The health committee is an outstanding committee, and the level of cooperation amongst all its members has been superb. I particularly want to thank my deputy chair, Dr Mike Freelander MP, for his expertise, good judgement and good humour, often at the butt end of my jokes. I also want to particularly acknowledge the role of the two supplementary members that we had for this inquiry, who brought their own expertise: the member for Higgins and the member for Dobell. Finally, I want to thank our committee secretariat staff, particularly Kate Portus, Rebecca Gordon and Peter Richardson. They have supported our work with exceptional dedication and quality, and occasionally some patience and forbearance.

The new frontier of medicine and technology is an exciting one for the health care we provide as a nation. Acting now to build on our obvious strengths in health will have enduring benefits for all Australians, for this generation and future generations to come. I commend this report to the House.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—First of all, I just want to dispel any question about why the chair and I wanted to have this committee investigation. It's not to expedite treatments for male pattern baldness, okay?

I wish to echo the words of the chair. I often talk about bipartisanship in this place, and this committee was really an exemplar of how bipartisanship can deliver wonderful outcomes. I commend the member for North Sydney for his chairmanship and for the report. We worked all together, and I'm very grateful for his support and encouragement during the entire inquiry process. I'd also like to thank the other members of the committee—the member for Makin, who's here with me today; the supplementary members, the member for Dobell and the member for Higgins; and the member for Oxley—all of whom made terrific contributions, as did our other members, the member for Reid and the member for Moncrieff. I thank them all for their efforts and, in particular, as I said, I want to thank the chair for his exemplary report.

I really would like to add a few comments of a personal nature on the report. I know it's not going to please everyone, but I think that the efforts that the committee members put in, and the secretariat of Rebecca Gordon, Kate Portus, Tamara Palmer, Peter Richardson and Rei-Gaylene Oroki, were absolutely wonderful. The report would not be as good as it is—and I think it is really good—without the efforts of everyone, particularly the secretariat, and they really do deserve recognition for their work. It has made me realise how much we rely on the Public Service and public servants to make sure our democracy works.

We'll have much to say in the coming days about this inquiry and our report, but, briefly, I think the most important thing that's come out of our report is the importance of patient centred care and the importance of a cooperative and collaborative approach to health care in the 21st century. I started my training as a doctor almost 50 years ago now, and we've made tremendous progress since then. But in the last 10 years it's become apparent that our science has progressed to the point where our individualised care for a whole range of illnesses, ranging from cancers through to neuromuscular disorders, is based on genetics and genomics and we will have individualised treatment for most of the disorders that we see in health care in the future. Our system, which was designed 20, 30 or 40 years ago, needs to be updated so that we can cope with this tsunami of genetic and genomic treatments.

In particular, I hope to see the end of oncology in terms of chemotherapy. We will have genetically targeted treatments for most cancers in the future, so that we'll be able to do away with the side effects of chemotherapy and people will get individualised biologic treatments that will cure their cancers.

In my own field of paediatrics, we are now seeing the arrival of genomic treatments for a whole range of neuromuscular disorders. People have mentioned in this House before, spinal muscular atrophy, for which there are now one-off genetic treatments available which appear to be curative. We are looking at evolving genetic treatments for fatal disorders, such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy. I met a family from the member for Lalor's seat who had three boys affected with Duchenne muscular dystrophy and unfortunately one of them passed away. This is a disorder that, in my paediatric life, I hope to see a cure be available for. That would be a wonderful, wonderful thing.

We are now at a real tipping point in medicine. This has been a wonderful report. The individual recommendations, of which there are over 30, are very, very important. But the importance now lays in us being able to make sure that whoever is in government takes these recommendations on board, develops them, funds them and has them as a basis of our modern health care in Australia. I certainly hope that I will be in the Labor government that does this. I look forward to that.

I would like to thank the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the Save Our Sons Duchenne Foundation, the spinal muscular atrophy groups, the metabolic disorder groups, the mitochondrial disorder groups and all the patient groups who presented to the committee and gave us their time without fail. I found it incredibly humbling to hear those stories, and I know that every other member of the committee felt the same. We felt absolutely privileged that people had let us into their lives. I know the members for Higgins, North Sydney and Makin felt that too: that we were given the privilege of getting the insights that they had into their own disorders. Part of our report will be trying to get those voices to our healthcare providers very early on in the approval process for new treatments—and that's what we want. All of us want that. This report did not have any political bias at all, and I'm very proud of that, as I know the chair and the other members are.

I would like to also thank the industry groups: the MTAA, Medicines Australia and all the industry groups that presented to us. They did it in a feeling of camaraderie and of goodwill, with the best outcomes for Australian patients at the forefront. I also feel really thankful to John Skerritt, the TGA, PBAC and MSAC for the time and the supports that they gave us in providing information to us. It made me very proud of our Australian healthcare public servants and the service they give to this country. I think that became apparent across the course of our inquiry. There's no doubt that they will be well supported by whoever is in government, if the chair and I have anything to do with it in the future.

The report provides a very clear path forward. I'm grateful for all the support that we were given by the parliament and by our parliamentary staff but, in particular, by every member that sat on the committee, no matter what their politics are. It's my hope that future governments will develop their health policies in line with our report. I commend the report to the House, and I thank you for the indulgence of being able to speak on the report today.

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I call the honourable member for North Sydney.

Trent Zimmerman (North Sydney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House take note of the report.

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.