John Murphy (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The government is willing to support the motion put forward by the shadow minister for health with amendments; however, I note with concern that, as usual, the opposition distorts the facts and attempts to frighten the sick, as it infers the government's drug-price disclosure policy will somehow disrupt the delivery of life-saving drugs to cancer patients.

The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme that pays for these drugs is a Commonwealth government scheme which gives Australians affordable access to necessary medicines and, interestingly, the PBS was started in 1948 as an initiative of the Chifley Labor government with free medicines for pensioners and a list of 139 'life-saving and disease preventing' medicines that were free of charge for others in the community.

Today Labor's PBS scheme is available to all Australian residents who hold a current Medicare card and the government subsidises the cost of medicine for most medical conditions, in particular for expensive drugs such as Docetaxel that are used to treat cancers. It is evident that the shadow minister for health is arguing not for the rights of cancer patients or the taxpayers but for the chemotherapy providers who were, it appeared, benefiting from the continuation of the previously high price that the government was paying for patented drugs like Docetaxel that have subsequently seen a drop in price following the expiry of their patent. Docetaxel is a derivative of Taxol, an anti-cancer drug that was first isolated in 1967 from the bark of the Pacific yew tree by scientists at the National Cancer Institute, an agency of the United States government that is funded by United States taxpayers.

Given that most of the important discoveries of medical science have been made in universities and public institutions, I would argue that, instead of simply paying endless sums to the companies that commercially exploit these findings, more funds should be made available to the university and research institute scientists and workers who actually find drugs like Taxol and similar substances. The most profound discovery in biology, that of the structure of DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid, was made 60 years by the Cambridge University scientists Francis Crick and James Watson yet, as far as I know, no member of the opposition has made any mention of the importance of this finding that is key to the development of treatment of cancers, diseases that are fundamentally disorders of the genes, themselves structures composed of molecules of DNA. I have no doubt that, if Crick and Watson had applied for research funding from an Abbott government, they would have been refused support on the grounds that such work had no commercial benefit and would not produce products useful for industry.

Is that fanciful? Perhaps not given that Dr Brendan Nelson, the then Howard government's minister, set up a Robb Pierre style committee of public safety to overlook research funding applications. That committee was composed of individuals who had neither training nor expertise in the proposals that they were vetting yet there was great concern that research grants may have been disallowed by ignorant individuals whose only qualifications were loyalty to the Liberal Party.

I have no doubt that an Abbott government would hasten to re-establish such a committee, given the evident hostility to science and rational policy-making shown by the opposition. Of course, the opposition will, if given the chance, slash funding for medical research given its profound hostility to scientists and their work as exemplified by the denial of the reality of climate change and the attacks on research funding under the failed Howard government.

In contrast, our government, determined to support medical research, has committed $3.7 billion since 2007 to improve the detection, prevention and treatment of cancer. The government's policy of an expanded and accelerated price disclosure for the cost of drugs is working to bring the price that the government pays for these substances into line with the prevailing market price.

In concluding, although some may seek the assistance of the shadow minister for health to complain that the monetary advantage that they previously enjoyed has been diminished, in the end the taxpayers and the patients will benefit from the reduction in outlays for particular drugs and, after all, it is for the patients that these policy changes have been introduced by our government.

Debate adjourned.

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