Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you to the member for Bullwinkel—following the member for Cooper and the member for Indi, she is the 10th nurse elected to this parliament and very appropriately represents an electorate named after the most famous nurse we have in Australia, Vivian Bullwinkel.

I first met the member for Bullwinkel when she was preparing a paper at a global cancer conference about the benefits of receiving chemotherapy in home as part of her Doctor of Nursing. This is a member who deeply understands the importance of a stronger Medicare and cheaper medicines. She also knows that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Today and every other day, on average, around 60 Australian women are told that they have breast cancer. Although the overall survival rate in this country is one of the world's best, it's much lower if you're told that you have metastatic breast cancer, or cancer that has spread to other parts of the body. Only about one in three of those women will survive more than five years.

Last week, we listed on the PBS a new drug that gives new hope to those women who've received a diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer. Truqap will benefit as many as 3,000 patients every year—women with HR-positive/HER2-negative advanced or metastatic breast cancer, a type that accounts for as much as 70 per cent of all breast cancer cases. Without a listing on the PBS, patients would have to pay around $100,000 for a course of treatment with this drug, and that is the magic of the PBS: providing access for Australian patients to the world's best medicines at affordable prices.

And we're making those PBS medicines even cheaper. The first four waves of our Cheaper Medicines policies have already saved Australian patients more than $1.5 billion in payments at the pharmacy counter—a huge amount. But there are more savings to come. This year we froze the price of PBS scripts for Australia's millions of pensioners, not just for this year but for the rest of the decade. And from 1 January next year the maximum price of a PBS script for Australia's general patients will be cut to just $25—the same price it was way back in 2004, more than 20 years ago. Obviously—it goes without saying—all this is terrific for the hip pocket, but it's also good for your health: helping Australians afford the medicines and the health care that their doctors have said are important for their health, creating a stronger Medicare and a healthier Australia.

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