Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I am not going to draw this out much further, but there we have it. I did ask earlier about the structure of these meetings and how they were going to work. We have at least found out that it is not up to us in this parliament to have a say in that—in fact, the government has not had a say in it; it is up to the four members of the department and the two representatives of the drug companies Merck Sharp & Dohme and Eli Lilly to come to an agreement on that. We will be told about the structure of this very powerful advisory group but not until after this legislation has been dealt with by the parliament. That is an appalling process. If that meeting has taken place, the department knows the outcome. For the department and the government to refuse to give details of the working structure of this committee is a slight on this chamber; it is an insult to us. We ought to have that information so that we can at least see how this body is going to work.

Underpinning this is our real concern that the drug companies involved—and let me reiterate that they have been the most lucrative sector of the market on average over recent times—are undoubtedly going to be moving to do what they can about getting better returns out of the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. The government has set up a system through the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement. The government said that it would shelter the PBS, and we now know that the PBS is not sheltered. We now see the chief advisory group actually representing the drug corporations with a power of veto, with secret minutes and with a report that parliament does not get at a time when it needs to legislate on crucial legislation like this. It is a committee that is actually in the service of the drug corporations and their profit line. It does not serve the public of Australia, the pensioners, the people using the PBS, the doctors and pharmacists. Ultimately, it is in the control of the drug corporations.

Yes, the government can take the advice or it can leave the advice. But where we have a secret organisation that is giving advice that is not available to the parliament but is going to go to the minister after this legislation is passed, we have to be very concerned. I object to that process. The government has the numbers in the Senate—I hope that it will not have the numbers after the next election—but I object to that process. It is undemocratic. It is simply an anathema to the proper role of the parliament, which is to be adequately informed and have access to the information—particularly with regard to schemes that cost millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money and save us from the US style system whereby the corporations call the tune and receive the monetary reward. We have to protect our Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme against that, but we are not going to do that with the secret arrangement that has been described here this morning whereby drug companies hold the veto.