Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fremantle for his question. He is a passionate advocate for better health care in his community and for Labor's promise of cheaper medicines. Already we are delivering on that promise. Last July, we cut the maximum amount that millions of pensioners and concession card holders would pay for their medicines across the year by 25 per cent. No matter how many medicines they're on, the most they'll pay across the year is an average of just $5 a week. In September, we cut the price of 2,000 brands of medicine, delivering $130 million back into the pockets of hardworking patients. On 1 January, we delivered the biggest cut to the price of medicines in the 75-year history of the PBS, slashing the maximum payment from a $42 a script to just $30. In just six months, that has delivered almost $120 million in savings to hardworking Australian patients.

We know, and the member for Fremantle knows, there is more to do, especially during a global cost-of-living shock like we are living through right now. That's why we have accepted the advice from the medicine experts that has been there for five years to allow 60-day prescriptions for ongoing health conditions at the same price as a 30-day script. This will halve the cost of 300 medicines for six million patients. Thirty-day scripts make sense for a one-off course of medicine, for example, for a bout of an infectious disease. They make absolutely no sense at all for stable patients who are on the same medicines year in, year out, decade in, decade out, sometimes for their entire life. That's why pretty much every patient group has supported our policy. It will also free up millions of GP consults, which we all know are desperately needed right now, which is why every doctors group supports our policy. We have promised to reinvest every single dollar that the government saves from this measure back into community pharmacies. On Friday, I announced the last details of that reinvestment, which will be focused on a small, rural pharmacies.

Against all of that—all of the expert advice, the policy logic, the support of every patient group and every doctor group—I read in the Australian newspaper this morning that the opposition is going to try to block cheaper medicines in the Senate for six million patients. Perhaps it's no surprise from the Leader of the Opposition, who as health minister, we all remember, tried to jack up the price of medicines by $5 for each and every script. But we are determined to deliver on our commitment. Cheaper medicines are good for the hip pocket and good for health.

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