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

The member for Wakefield is not a bad person, but he is a repeat offender in this place when it comes to interruptions.

The important point that I am trying to make is that we have to get this right. We have an opportunity to talk constructively to the state governments about how we can do this better. If we keep more people out of hospital, it costs the state hospital system less money. It costs the federal hospital system less money. It costs the federal primary care system less money. Most importantly, it is in the best interests of the patient. It is a win all around. I look forward to the Labor Party working with me on this.

When it comes to health in the budget I want to make a few key points. Our investment in health and sport will increase to a total of $69.7 billion, which is an increase of $2.3 billion over the last year. So that is $2.3 billion extra spending in health in just 12 months. Total annual hospital funding, often a subject in this place, also increases by 25 per cent or $3.8 billion over the next four years—despite Labor's repeated scare campaigns. We see the MBS growing to over $21 billion in 2015-16, and we will also spend $10 billion on the PBS. These are record levels of spending in health. We are spending more in health than ever before. That is a good thing but it also means that these challenges confront us. In spite of those challenges, I want to reassure the member for Ballarat, the shadow spokesperson, that on some of the issues that she mentioned as being under fire in this budget she is not correct.

I will start with the last thing she mentioned, which was the after-hours primary healthcare arrangements. As many would know, there was in existence a 24-hour phone help service, operated by Healthdirect Australia. This is a triage system, where the nurse answers the phone and decides whether you need to be referred to a doctor. Only 15 per cent of calls to Healthdirect were deemed necessary to be transferred to the GP helpline. So we have made a rephase of the funding. We have not taken the money away. The opportunity to ring the health line will still be there, but instead our primary health networks, which we are setting up on 1 July, will give people a choice, depending on the area in which they operate. Would you prefer to call somebody maybe on the other side of the country—it is always good to have somebody on the end of the phone—or would you prefer to have a local doctor in your own area, available to support you after hours? What we will say to the primary health networks is: you set up the best arrangement for you and we will fund it. No reduced funding in that area.

The member for Ballarat mentioned dental health. I need to place some things on the record. Dental health is very important. It is a really vital preventative health area. We are extending the national partnership with the states for a further 12 months, and we are negotiating the content of that national partnership now. This is about the adult public dental services. It will be valued at $155 million and will go for 12 months. As I said in the lead-up to that work on the reform of the federation—the arrangements we make between the Commonwealth and the states—we will incorporate dental health because we are serious about it. In addition, we are continuing access to the Child Dental Benefits Schedule. This is important, too, because children are frequently treated in the public system. We are allowing the state governments to access the child dental benefit system for children in the public system and also if they go to their private dentist. Dentists are doing the right thing and effectively bulk-billing children, which means that 96½ per cent of all children who go to see their dentist under this arrangement are not paying any out-of-pocket costs. I wanted to respond to the member for Ballarat on that point.

She talked about cheaper medicines. We had some good news about that this week—and I know she was paying close attention. The arrangements that we struck this week—three strategic agreements between the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, Medicines Australia and Generic Medicines Industry Association—mean that we will have five years of certainty and five years of clear understanding between us and the manufacturers of medicine about the supply of those medicines to pharmacists. To the general public, these arrangements are somewhat esoteric and behind the scenes, and I understand that; but the point and the purpose of them is that, when patients go to their pharmacy, they continue to get affordable medicines. The reason we need to do this is the numbers of new medicines that are coming onto the PBS, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, that are funded by government. This is the responsible approach we take—and I know that it is shared by the opposition—to listing new medicines. It is something which we are very serious about. It is not done as well in many other countries around the world as it is in Australia.

When people are diagnosed with severe life-threatening and life-changing diseases there is the opportunity for them to be able to pay under concession $6.10 per script or, as a general payment for those of us here, $37.70 a script for medicines that may cost $50, $60 or $100,000. In the budget we listed a medicine for third stage late treatment melanoma called Mekinist. The actual value of that medicine is $131,000 a script. I am proud that as a government we can make that available. We need to understand that in order to do that we have to continue to drive down the cost of generic medicines. We have been delighted with the support of the manufacturers of those medicines in understanding that in taking effectively less profits from the system they are enabling the space in the PBS for those listings of medicines. Overall, the many medicines, the commonly used ones, on the PBS are coming down by 50 per cent—a good note on which to end. (Time expired)

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