Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, can I say thank you very much to the member for Swan for his contribution and I acknowledge the work that he does on the health and ageing committee. He has a great interest in health and his contribution earlier was reflective of that. As he pointed out, I have visited his electorate and we are very cognisant of the fact that in this portfolio we spend about $65 billion a year, and if the member for Swan had his way every dollar would be spent in his electorate! That includes the money that we spend in the sport portfolio—about $350 million. He would lay claim to each and every one of those dollars as well!

Yes, we want to provide extra support to Swan, and we will do that. I recognise, in particular, the grassroots support that he provides to many of those health services within his electorate. The substantive part of his question was in relation to medical research, and I am particularly proud of the decision that the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, the finance minister and I took in relation to the Medical Research Future Fund. The most significant part of that Medical Research Future Fund is that the $20 billion will be capital protected so that any future Labor government cannot spent that capital down.

Why is that important? Because we know that over the course of the last few years when Labor spent at will and ran up debt, which is always their wont, they ran into a situation where they spent the money out of the Higher Education Investment Fund, they spent money that was to go into the Health and Hospitals Fund and they spent every dollar of capital. The idea was that we could live off that capital and that the earnings off that capital could be spent to rehabilitate and to provide extra support for infrastructure, on the one hand in relation to higher education facilities and on the other in relation to hospital and health assets around the country. But Labor spent down every dollar. So that is why it is particularly important that we protect the $20 billion, and from 2015-16 we will draw down earnings from that fund as it continues to grow. It will achieve its $20 billion by 2022-23, but from 2015-16 we will draw down about $20 million in that first year. It will ramp up to about a billion dollars at its peak, and that is significant.

It is significant because it will help us address many of the conditions which worry Australians as we age: diseases of the brain, which cause all of this significant concern—particularly when you see people within your own communities and within your own families suffering from dementia, Alzheimer's and the like. By 2050, 7½ thousand Australians will be diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer's every week. That is why it is important for us to double effectively the amount of money we are putting into medical research, not only so that we can try and strive towards those cures which the member for Swan spoke of earlier but also so that we can look at additional ways in which we can provide care. Care models are very important way of how medicine will be practised and how payment models will operate into the coming years, and those are at the centre of the government's objectives as well.

So I very much thank the member for Swan. As he knows, there is of course a significant economic benefit from medical research. The McKeon review, as it reported to the previous government, said that a dollar invested into medical research will return $2.17, which is really why it is unbelievable that Labor in 2011 tried to take $400 million out of medical research.

Can I also thank the honourable member for Wright for his patriotic contribution. he is a very proud Queenslander, as am I. We will be successful tomorrow night, as history has shown—Mr Deputy Speaker, I know you would allow great indulgence on this topic, perhaps for us to talk for an hour on the virtues of why Queensland will win tomorrow night, but we will leave that for another time.

The $156 million we contributed to the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast will be very significant. It will be significant because we can provide support to those emerging athletes, and we will host a world-class games. The legacy assets will be particularly important to the Commonwealth, so we can provide support for future growth and increase participation right across sports on the Gold Coast, in the hinterland, in the electorate of Wright and well and truly beyond that. So I thank the member for Wright for his contribution.

In response to the member for Ballarat's contribution, I can say that I reject most of the figures put forward by the member for Ballarat. I am sorry that the scare campaign continues. It is more reflective on the opposition than it is on the government.

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