Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

It has the opportunity to transform medical research in Australia with this major additional injection of funds. No investment like this has ever been made, and it will lead the world. We know that every dollar we invest in health and medical research returns $2.17.

While we are all very familiar with Australia's track record and we know, for example, the success of the cochlear implant, I want to make the House aware of something recent that has come out of the University of Queensland: the Nanopatch, which is a needle-free vaccine. It does not require refrigeration. It does not require a medical practitioner. It can be dropped, posted or collected anywhere in the world. The Cubans, who are trying to cure polio, have asked us for this patch. I know that, in developing countries, it is going to make a real difference to population health.

Make no mistake: the past, present and future of medical research funding in this country is owned by the Liberal and National parties. It is owned by the Liberal and National parties. In fact, when the Prime Minister was the Minister for Health and Ageing, funding towards medical research quadrupled in the first six years of the Howard government. We know that Labor in 2011 tried to cut $140 million from medical research. We know also that they took about the same amount of money out of the budget in 2013; they were so embarrassed that they backflipped. So the total was actually $400 million that they tried to rip out. Nearly half a billion dollars of funding in medical research that Labor tried to take away in their last term of government—

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