Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We are supporting the National Health Amendment (Pharmaceutical Benefits) Bill 2015 here tonight. We realise that the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme is an absolutely essential part of the social contract within Australia. It is a very critical part of our health system, and of course dealing with the rationing of resources in this area is always a matter of extreme complexity for government.

We see that medical innovation is increasing constantly and that more and more drugs are coming onto the market. We see the move to personalise medicine, where more drugs are being targeted at a particular segment of the population that may have a particular gene. With that comes extraordinary capacity for dealing with cancers and other diseases that only five years ago would have been terminal. Now we are seeing some extraordinary results. I think just today that we heard of publication of a new drug to treat mesothelioma. Again we have seen an Australian drug that has been invented and that has shown some quite spectacular early success in the treatment of mesothelioma. Of course we want to ensure that our community has access to those drugs and that the ability to access those drugs is not constrained by one's personal means, and so there is always this enormous tension for government in trying to ensure that we have a Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme that is sustainable.

On that basis, and notwithstanding a number of concerns that we have about the details of the legislation, we are prepared to offer our support for this legislation. In his address, the member for Throsby really outlined many of the areas of concern. I will not go through those except to say that we did not always see the same bipartisanship in relation to the agreements that Labor put forward, even though Labor did work much more collaboratively with the industry to come to a landing on these.

I want to make particular reference to some drugs, and one in particular, that have been approved by the minister. I compliment the minister on doing that. These are drugs that we have been approached by members of our communities to support, in particular—and my pronunciation of this might be a bit off—crizotinib. This is a drug which successfully treats a rare cancer mutation—ALK4. We have been dealing with this on behalf of Julie Sackett from Western Australia. She is a lovely woman with three young children and who, despite being young, fit and healthy, has been struck with this particular cancer, as has the mother of Theresa Tan. Both of these families have been unable to afford the drug. The drug costs $7,500 per month, and they have been desperately awaiting its approval. So, we are very conscious of the need to make space constantly within the PBS for these new and expensive treatments that are coming down the line.

But I also say as part of this that we have to be prepared to take on the pharmaceutical industry. I think one of the things that has most surprised me since arriving in this place is just how strong the pharmaceutical lobby is—how, on a daily basis, we have drug companies presenting us with new treatments. They are very skilful in their lobbying. They will often combine with groups; they encourage a 'Friends of' a particular illness to form and then through that vehicle promote their particular pharmaceutical. Or they will create third-party groups—extra-parliamentary groups—to support the promotion of their drugs. This is notwithstanding the fact that I believe we have in Australia a very strong system with the therapeutic goods provisions and the way in which we assess new products coming under the banner of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which very clearly looks at cost-benefit and opportunity costs of new treatments. Notwithstanding this, we have an enormous amount of lobbying on the part of the drug companies. Indeed, from time to time we have the situation where drug companies have a drug and go out looking for a disease for which they can use their drug. Of course, we see that no more clearly than in the instance of ADHD, where the use of the psychostimulants has, in my view, been extremely controversial and highly problematic in the outcome that it has for so many young people.

It is always a challenge to rein in the aspirations of the pharmaceutical companies. We want to encourage innovation. We need that research and the development that goes on. But I am one that deeply regrets that we lost our ability, as a government, to do this. I think that the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories were a very important part of Australia's medical system, where we actually did have some in-house capacity to do that research. Recognising that it is a very expensive area, we want to encourage these pharmaceutical companies to engage in innovation, but at the same time we have to be very mindful that this can be a very avaricious beast and one that does need to be corralled if we are to be able to have a sustainable system.

I do note that the government are claiming, and indeed has some case for saying, that they have progressed in relation to advancing the use of generics. It does need to be acknowledged that Labor did much work in this area when we were in government, but I acknowledge that the government are continuing that work. I do find it a little interesting that a lot is being said about the achievement in this agreement. Yet, at the same time, we look at the Trans-Pacific Partnership that we are contemplating entering into and, from information that has recently been found via WikiLeaks, we understand that there are provisions in the TPP that could undermine the work that is being done within this agreement. And indeed the—

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