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

As I indicated, we won't be supporting this amendment. The effect of the amendment would really be to ensure that this particular group of registered nurses, who are now able to seek this endorsement through changes made by the board and will now be able to prescribe as state and territory parliaments change their legislation, which they have all committed to, will not be able to access the PBS. It would effectively make medicines more expensive for patients who had those medicines prescribed under changes that have already been decided on by the board and that are in the process of being made by state and territory parliaments. This legislation will simply ensure that those patients are able to pay PBS prices, not the market prices that the National Party would have them pay under their amendment.

I also indicate—and I think I said it in my summing up—that this has been the subject of almost a decade of consultation and modelling by the nurses' board. All the doctors' groups were involved in this as well as, obviously, a range of other groups. The member said that there was no funding available for this. As the member well knows—I know she's very familiar with primary care—the workforce incentive payment already supports the employment of registered nurses in primary care settings. This will simply ensure that they're able to do some more work subject, obviously, to the oversight of medical practitioners working in those practices. Importantly, this will also enable registered nurses, subject to the endorsement of the board, to play a prescribing role, in the appropriate way, in other settings such as: aged-care settings; hospital settings, including for discharge; mental health settings; and others. For those reasons, we will not be supporting the amendment.

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