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

My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. What action is the Albanese Labor government taking to make medicines cheaper? Why is this action needed, and how are new listings on the PBS improving the health of Australians?

Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the terrific member for Macarthur for his question. Australia, as he knows, has one of the best medicine systems in the world, underpinned by the PBS, which, of course, is another great Labor legacy opposed at the time by the Liberal Party. The PBS ensures that Australians get access to the best cutting-edge medicines available anywhere in the world and at affordable prices. In just two years, we have made 200 new or expanded listings to that PBS.

This month we expanded access to Trikafta to children under the age of five years who are living with cystic fibrosis. A new child is born in Australia with CF every four days, and, as a long-time paediatrician, the member for Macarthur knows better than anyone in this chamber just how devastating that condition is for those kids and for their families. Trikafta is simply amazing and its impact is almost immediate. Ashley, who is the mother of a four-year-old boy, Heath, said at the time we listed this:

A few people have said today, what does this mean to us? In my family, it means hope … we just can't wait to keep planning the long life for Heath that we know he's going to have.

But it's also expensive. Indeed, without PBS listing, this medicine costs as much as $250,000 every year. From this month, though, an additional 330 kids every year will get access to this new medicine at affordable PBS prices—PBS prices that we have been making even cheaper in the two years that we've been a government. We have slashed the maximum amount that pensioners pay by 25 per cent. That's the biggest cut to the price of medicines in the 75-year history of the PBS. We are finally allowing doctors to issue 60-day supplies of common medicines for ongoing health conditions. Of course, in May, the Treasurer froze the price of PBS medicines for up to five years—a measure which in and of itself will save patients as much as half a billion dollars over the coming five years. We are determined to keep making medicines cheaper because it's good for the hip pocket, obviously, but it's also good for Australians' health.

The Leader of the Opposition has always taken a different view of this, as Australians will very well remember. He was a member of the government which, back in 2005, under John Howard, jacked up the price of medicines by almost $5 a script. He then tried to do the same again, by another $5 a script, when he was the Minister for Health in 2014. Of course, in this term of parliament, he has opposed all of our cheaper-medicines policies. That's what you would get again from this man: services always going down, prices always going up.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.