Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will be very brief. I think Senator Siewert as chair of the committee covered nearly everything that I think was of note in the committee report. I, too, want to put on record my thanks to the secretariat, who have been under great strain trying to deliver on the demands of each of the members of the committee and dealing with huge amounts of evidence. I echo Senator Siewert's comments there: we place on record our thanks for their work and their professionalism.

As Senator Siewert said, it is an exceptionally complex issue and I am not sure that I understand it any better than at the beginning, but we were able to tease out a great deal of information pointing to areas that we as a committee felt needed improvement. They relate to transparency, they relate to accountability and, of course, as the committee found, they relate to affordability and the differences in prices between public and private hospitals.

The point made by Senator Siewert that we need to bear in mind, with whatever action the government takes in response to this inquiry and its recommendations, is that we must ensure that the Australian manufacturers are not unfairly dealt with because they are smaller entities. They are not of the same size as many of the multinationals. There is a lot of innovation that takes place here in Australia, and I want to make sure that, moving forward, whatever we do in terms of a government response actually looks after those interests and ensures that we keep that innovation onshore, here in Australia. To that end, of course, the response needs to be evidence based. Any way of dealing with the high cost of implantable prostheses needs to be based on strong evidence. We cannot just have a blunt-instrument approach. We need to do it in a way that ensures we are dealing with the problems.

Across the board, though—and I again echo what Senator Siewert said—there was consensus on the report. Everyone wanted to end up at the same spot, and that was to ensure that there is fairness in pricing and that we do not unduly impact on Australian manufacturers. I, too, commend the report to the chamber. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.