Mark Butler
Hindmarsh · Australian Labor Party · Australia
“But earlier today we were all in here voting on the latest instalment in the member for Lindsay's ongoing but thus far unsuccessful campaign to rebrand the Liberal Party.”
“I thank the member for Werriwa for her contribution and for her really strong support for everything we're doing to make Medicare stronger and make medicines cheaper. I thank all members for their contributions to the debate on this bill. As the member for Werriwa said, Medicare is the very best of Australia.”
“I thank the member for his question, which is a question I've answered before in this place since the budget. As I've said on a number of occasions publicly and in this chamber, the additional support that over-65s have received since about 2004 for their private health insurance premium is something we did revisit given the significant p…”
“But, under ours, they'll receive an increase of more than 20 per cent, or an additional $160 million in this year alone, which means more doctors, more nurses and better care in Tasmania.”
“Importantly, this bill provides stability so patients can continue to benefit from the outcomes of these programs and strengthened access to primary care.”
“That approach gives providers and the government greater certainty while preserving the flexibility needed to keep program settings up to date as health system needs evolve. Importantly, the bill does not change the underlying policy settings of existing programs.”
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“This includes poor and inconsistent service quality, conflicts of interest and fraudulent practices. The new model will be informed by recommendations from the NDIS review and further consultation with the disability community and providers. Finally, we will be exploring different commissioning models for supported independent living, which provides support to some of the most vulnerable NDIS participants. We will look at how commissioning can benefit both participants and providers to achieve funding certainty, better manage cost growth and improve outcomes. Schedule 3 sets out amendments relating to the governance arrangements that support the effective operation and administration of the scheme. The bill will make the minister the decision-maker on pricing.”
“Between 2018 and 2024, seven reviews and studies have recommended reform to the plan management and support coordination market. Of note, the NDIS Review and the NDIS Commission's Own Motion Inquiry into Support Coordination and Plan Management found: This bill will enable the government to commission a panel of plan managers. Providers will be required to meet a range of standards, processes and requirements that strengthen governance and integrity. Amendments will also strengthen protections against conflicts of interest. We will also commission providers directly to deliver a new support coordination and connection service. This will address issues raised by the disability community about the quality and integrity of the current support coordination market.”
“The bill also inserts a range of new civil penalty provisions, including parallel civil penalties, to existing criminal offences within the act. These new civil penalty provisions are intended to deter providers and individuals from engaging in unlawful, non-complaint conduct by imposing financial penalties. The bill will also improve the plan management market. Plan managers have an important role within the NDIS to assist participants to manage funding within their plans—but the market isn't working. Of the 1,500 plan managers, around a third support fewer than 10 participants. The agency estimates that almost nine in 10 of these intermediaries have at least one integrity risk flag, such as conflict of interest, the potential for collusion or fraud.”
“The agency's legislative framework and monitoring and investigative powers are weak when compared to other comparable program administrators across the Commonwealth. The NDIA does not have, for example, access to monitoring and investigative powers under the Regulatory Powers (Standard Provisions) Act 2014. Additionally, the agency does not have sufficient, effective and proportionate midrange enforcement powers to deal with low- to mid-level fraud and noncompliance that does not warrant criminal sanctions. The bill extends the monitoring and investigation powers in parts 2 and 3 of the Regulatory Powers Act to the NDIA. This will enable the NDIA to investigate serious fraud and noncompliance in relation to claims and payments in the scheme.”
“The current definition of 'NDIS provider' under section 9 of the NDIS Act is an obstacle to effective registration of providers. The current definition is too broad and encompasses retailers and suppliers it was never intended to cover. Within the current definition, mainstream retailers who are paid for their goods and services with NDIS funding are obliged to comply with a code of conduct despite their lack of awareness that they are providing supports under a participant's plan. The bill addresses these issues by amending the definition of 'NDIS provider', consistent with the advice of the registration taskforce. Another key provision in the bill is strengthening the civil penalties and regulatory powers of the National Disability Insurance Agency.”
“The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission has advised that criminals are paying cash kickbacks to participants and their families. The bill addresses this intolerable situation. Schedule 2 includes measures that address fraud and improve integrity within the NDIS and provide the agency with necessary powers to regulate the payment of NDIS amounts. Provider registration is an effective measure for combatting fraud. Currently, only one in 16 providers are registered. Registration requires providers to meet defined quality and safeguarding standards, undergo independent audits and suitability assessments, comply with worker screening and reporting obligations, and maintain ongoing adherence to governance and safety requirements.”
“When exposed to fraud and non-compliance, participants are subjected to lower quality services, to exploitation and to harm. When someone defrauds the NDIS they're taking resources that should be spent on a participant who genuinely needs this funding. Our biggest concern is that often when we see fraudulent behaviour, we also see risk and harm to vulnerable people, and that simply can't be allowed to continue. The Fraud Fusion Taskforce has identified eight recurring design failures in longstanding government programs, that make them susceptible to fraud. The NDIS has all eight. It also has none of the seven fundamental building blocks for high-integrity programs. As a result, the NDIS has become a soft target, and a lack of integrity has opened the door to organised crime.”
“The NDIS was never intended to replace health, rehabilitation and treatment services which play a critical role in preventing lifelong disability. Schedule 2 sets out amendments that further strengthen the ability of the National Disability Insurance Agency to effectively manage integrity of the NDIS. This builds on existing fraud measures and responds to calls from both the NDIS review and the disability royal commission for strengthened safeguards to protect participants, and improved processes to protect the scheme from fraud and non-compliance. Fraud and non-compliance have a direct and devastating impact on the lives of participants and their families, often leaving them without the means to cover everyday supports that enable their basic human rights.”
“This bill will clarify what it means for a support to be reasonable. This will be determined in part by deciding what is reasonable to expect the NDIS to fund. This means considering consistency across government funded social service systems, scheme sustainability, value for money and family support. Schedule 1 also tightens the meaning of permanence to reduce access where an impairment can be treated. The NDIS review recommended a more effective approach to determining how permanence is assessed, to refocus the scheme on supporting people with significant and permanent disability. This bill clearly outlines that people must undertake all appropriate treatments, before an impairment can be considered permanent or lifelong for the purpose of accessing the NDIS.”
“Instead the agency regularly extends plans, and rolls over any unspent funds from the previous plan period to the next one. This inflates the value of participants' plans over time, beyond what was originally considered to be reasonable and necessary. This bill will ensure all plans have an end date, and any unspent funds from the previous plan will not be carried over to the renewed plan. The renewed plan will be based on the previous plan, but will remove one-off funding for things like home modifications, and the value will be indexed. Reasonable and necessary supports will be made clearer. The provision of 'reasonable and necessary supports' is one of the key foundations of the NDIS. However, its interpretation has broadened over time, which has a direct impact on the sustainability of the scheme.”
“The use of support determinations will stabilise growth in funding for certain groups of supports. It will keep plans aligned with what is 'reasonable' for the scheme as a whole to fund, and put the scheme on a more sustainable footing into the future. This will stabilise costs in the scheme and guarantee the essential services the NDIS provides—here and now. We will also establish a $200 million fund—the Inclusive Communities Fund—to rebuild capability among community organisations so NDIS participants have new options to genuinely participate in their local community. Schedule 1 also establishes plan renewals by introducing a legislated end date for all participant plans. Currently, old framework plans do not have an end date, and most plans do not undergo a plan reassessment.”
“The bill introduces a clear, strengthened and direct link between a participant's support needs and impairments which have met the disability requirements or early intervention requirements. Schedule 1 will enable the Commonwealth minister to make determinations to reset funding for groups of supports like social, community and civic participation and capacity building. Currently we don't have adequate controls to effectively target and tighten the funding of supports for old framework plans. This has resulted in the scheme growing too fast. Five years ago, the social, community and civic participation support stream alone cost $4 billion per year. This year, it's more than $12 billion. Triple the spending in just five years. If left unchecked, that spending would skyrocket to around $20 billion by the end of the decade.”
“Some requests for plan reassessments are made by intermediaries, such as support coordinators and plan managers, and some requests are made even without the knowledge of the participant. This bill will make sure that only participants, or their plan nominee or guardian, will be able to request an unscheduled plan reassessment. Unscheduled reassessments will only be possible when: Schedule 1 also includes provisions designed to strengthen the link between an impairment and the need for support. This seeks to address situations where participants have multiple impairments, some meeting the disability requirements or early intervention requirements, and others not. In such cases it is difficult, based on the current criteria, to limit reasonable and necessary funding to only the impairments that meet the NDIS eligibility requirements.”
“The Australian government will establish a technical advisory group to provide expert advice on an appropriate threshold and assessments for substantially reduced functional capacity—informed, obviously, by consultation with the community and states and territories. This bill will also limit unscheduled plan reassessments. Unscheduled plan reassessments are a key driver of spending growth, and the agency has not been able to reduce the number of plans undergoing an unscheduled reassessment. One in five plans are currently subject to an unscheduled reassessment every year. And the average result of these reassessments is a 20 per cent increase in plan value.”
“This has led to unfair outcomes and contributed to higher participant numbers in the scheme, well beyond its original intent of supporting people with permanent and significant disability, as was modelled by the Productivity Commission. The bill seeks to address this inequity by clarifying the meaning of 'functional capacity' and providing for the assessment of thresholds of that functional capacity. This will introduce a more consistent and robust approach to determining eligibility for access to the NDIS based on transparent methods for assessing functional capacity. Further work is needed to identify the appropriate threshold of functional capacity for the NDIS context, and the bill provides the basis for that future work.”
“The bill takes up recommendations on measures to improve delivery of the NDIS that have been made to government by various independent reviews of the NDIS, including the Independent Review into the NDIS, in 2023, and the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability, as well as advice of the NDIS Provider and Worker Registration Taskforce (known as the registration taskforce), which was completed in 2024 and chaired by Ms Natalie Wade. The bill consists of five schedules. Schedule 1 sets out changes to access and eligibility to the NDIS, as well as the management of plans for scheme participants. The NDIS review found that the current approach to accessing the scheme is inconsistent and inequitable and not always targeted to those people with disability who require the most support.”
“I move: That this bill be now read a second time. The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 seeks to return the NDIS to its original intent—providing lifetime supports for Australians with permanent and significant disability. The measures in this bill will secure the future of the NDIS, so future generations can count on its promise in decades to come. The bill will improve the quality of supports and the operation of the scheme for participants, and deliver more capability to address fraudulent activity by providing the National Disability Insurance Agency with the necessary powers that it needs to regulate and monitor the payment of over $50 billion dollars each year.”
“Once we hit that $1 billion mark, when you put it alongside the NHMRC funding, we'll be investing $2 billion or more every single year in our world-class health and medical research workforce. It is going to be a terrific thing when we get to that. To the national strategy—as the member knows, and many members on our side have engaged in this as well, we asked Rosemary Huxtable, a very esteemed former public servant who was secretary of Finance and deputy secretary of Health as well as holding many other positions, to do a unified strategy rather than having an NHMRC strategy and an MRFF strategy. That has been delivered to government. I want to wait until we have a budget outcome around MRFF disbursements as well as the one-stop shop before we look at releasing that, but I'll have more to say about that in the coming days.”
“The member for Chisholm and the Minister for Housing have that rival precinct down in Clayton and have also been strong advocates. And there are many, many others besides. I want to acknowledge the Treasurer, who, with a very busy workload, thought about this very carefully after the 10-year review of the MRFF and lobbying from many in the community. That is why I was so very pleased to be able to find, in a very challenging budget, around half a billion dollars in new funding to start to see those disbursements ramp up from $650 million a year to $1 billion a year by the end of this decade. As the member probably knows, we've also found $15 million to do the next stage of the one-stop shop for clinical trials to improve the clinical trials and research environment in Australia.”
“Thanks to the member for Kooyong for that question. As she knows, Australia punches way above its weight in health and medical research. We're about No. 7 in the world, although we don't even rate in the top 50 by way of population. That was the objective, the mission, of Billy Hughes 80 years ago this year when he established the NHMRC, and we've achieved it. We have year upon year added great potential for health care, not just for people here in Australia but for people right across the world. But I acknowledge people have wanted us to do more, including the member herself. The member for Melbourne, who has the great honour of representing one of the most important biomedical precincts on the planet, at Parkville, has been a strong advocate.”
“The bill I'll present later this week is simply good financial management and good financial control. The deeper reform I telegraphed in my speech to the press club will be conducted in close consultation with the disability community and with the states and territories as well. (Time expired)”
“That path rests on four pillars: fighting fraud and stopping rorts, which everyone wants to do; slowing rapid cost increases of the type we've seen in the latest cost blowouts since December; clearer eligibility requirements to get the scheme back to its original intent; and, most importantly, delivering quality supports and services to people living with disability. I stress: even with these changes, the NDIS will continue to grow every single year. But by the end of the decade we project it will cost $55 billion rather than the current projection of $70 billion. It will still be the largest social program we have in this country, outside the aged pension, and still the centrepiece of the most comprehensive framework of supports for people with disability you will find anywhere on the planet.”
“But the truth is it currently costs too much, it's growing too fast and it's become a soft target for too many fraudsters and shonks as well as, frankly, for serious organised crime. We simply can't go on like this. We can't afford for the NDIS to continue to fail. The steps we've taken over the last few years to get it back on track simply aren't delivering the results that we need to see in the scheme. Since just last December and the mid-year budget review in MYEFO, costs have already blown out by more than $13 billion. These blowouts simply can't continue. That's why, later this week, I'll introduce legislation to get a grip on that scheme inflation—and on plan inflation as well—and to set the clearest possible path to a secure, sustainable future for the NDIS.”
“Thank you to the member for Whitlam. I don't think there's anyone in this chamber who knows more about the NDIS and disability services than the member for Whitlam. She has worked with it and in it for the entirety of the scheme's life, including, before coming here last year, as the chief executive of one of the country's largest disability institutions. So I value her advice very deeply. The NDIS is unarguably one of Australia's great modern reforms. It's gone from being the dream of generations of activists through the seventies, eighties and nineties to becoming a truly cherished institution. It's changed the lives, as all of us know, of literally hundreds of thousands of people with disability and their families as well.”
“Our CALD strategy was co-designed with more than 800 people working with us—CALD NDIS participants. Over the last few months of last year, we had 68 sessions, with more than 3,000 CALD participants and other stakeholders. To inform that work, we've got an expert advisory group that is advising us about implementation on things like better data and making sure that that markets and services are attuned to the cultural needs of participants. I've made the decision to expand the remit of that group's work to include the reforms that the member asked me about.”
“A series of those changes are about essentially urgent financial controls, and I will be introducing legislation this week to put those controls in place and to get that cost growth under control. But there are other reforms that will need more work, in close consultation with the disability community that will take place over coming months, and that must include CALD members of the disability community. Given that our recognition of CALD participants in the NDIS relies on voluntary identification, frankly, we're currently underdoing that engagement. Only nine per cent of NDIS participants are registered as CALD. In a country with 30 per cent of the population identifying as CALD, that is obviously an underrepresentation, and we've been working very hard to improve that engagement.”
“I know how often the member acknowledges the benefit of our investments in strengthening Medicare, and I thank her for those frequent acknowledgements. But she asks about the NDIS, and I thank her for that question and her interest, particularly around CALD communities. We've had a discussion already about that. First of all, can I say how determined we are to get this scheme back on track. It's growing too fast. It's got too big. There's, frankly, too much money going to shonks and fraudsters. We see it as a very deep responsibility of a government, particularly a Labor government that put this scheme in place in the first place, to secure its future for the long term.”
“Thank you to the member for Fowler for her question. Can I take the opportunity just to say a couple of things about investments for her community in the budget last night. She will have seen $80 million provisioned for the upgrade of the emergency department at the Fairfield Hospital, part of a $630 million total upgrade. The Minister for Climate Change and Energy talks to me a lot about the importance of that to that community. The Liverpool Urgent Care Clinic is working well, and can I say to the member there is no electorate that has done better from our bulk-billing investments than the electorate of Fowler. Now 97 per cent of general practices in Fowler are bulk-billing 100 per cent of their patients.”
“That's not to mention the cheaper medicines benefits—2½ million cheaper scripts just in the member for Braddon's community and hundreds of millions across the broader nation—or the mental health investments to open a new Medicare mental health centre in Devonport late last year, with another one to come in Burnie in the future, as well as uplifting the headspace at Burnie, which will now be full service as well. We know the difference that these investments in strengthening Medicare make, not just in the member for Braddon's electorate but in electorates right across the country—those represented by those opposite, the crossbench and Labor as well—because Medicare is the core social program for our country. (Time expired)”
“Can I also say that Braddon has had one of the best responses to our bulk-billing investments of any community—one of the best to the first investment we made for 2023, targeted at pensioners and concession card holders. Since our additional record investment in November, the number of bulk-billing practices in Braddon has more than doubled. Now, seven out of 10 general practices in Braddon bulk-bill all of their patients all of the time.”
“I'm really pleased to say that the biggest beneficiaries of that additional investment are the smaller states, because they had been getting a raw deal for far too long. Tasmania will get an additional almost $1 billion, really lifting them up to the level they should have been at for years and years. I know that's going to make a difference not just to Braddon but to all of the communities in Tasmania. We also locked in that investment for Medicare urgent care clinics, making them a permanent feature of our Medicare system. The Devonport urgent care clinic has already seen more than 40,000 people, all bulk-billed. The Burnie urgent care clinic, which was recently opened in the soon-to-be-opened Burnie Health Hub, has already seen thousands of patients from that part of Devonport as well.”
“Last night, the Treasurer delivered his and the government's fifth budget. In every single one of those budgets, a priority of this government has been strengthening Medicare. I struggle to think of a community that has benefited more from our Medicare investments than north-west Tasmania, and I struggle to think of a candidate who has campaigned more energetically for those investments than the member for Braddon. It may be part of the reason why she got the biggest swing to her at the last election of any one of the 150 members in this House—other than, of course, her endless charm and energy as a candidate! Last night we provisioned $25 billion in additional hospital funding. That's $25 billion more than the states and territories would have got if the agreement negotiated under the Morrison government had been continued.”
“Mr Speaker, you could not find a better advocate for Medicare than the member for Dickson. She understands better than most just how important a high-quality universal health insurance system is for Australia and its people. That's why she campaigned so hard for more bulk-billing, for more doctors and nurses, for cheaper medicines and, of course, for more urgent care options. Last week, yet again, she hosted the Prime Minister at the Murrumba Downs Medicare urgent care clinic. He loves it up there. I'm not quite sure how many times he's been. It's a lot.”
“These passengers will be flown into RAAF Base Pearce, north-east of Perth, and they will be immediately transferred to the national resilience centre or quarantine centre at Bullsbrook, which is effectively next door and will be staffed by staff from the NCCTRC deployed from Darwin. They will be quarantined there for three weeks, which is the strongest quarantine arrangement by any government that is receiving repatriated passengers from this cruise ship. After those three weeks, we'll be taking further advice from public health officials.”
“They are being kept informed about the arrangements that we are putting in place, and Foreign Affairs is in the process of finalising a flight to repatriate them to Australia. Our government has a very clear view that quarantine arrangements for people arriving in Australia are a national responsibility—not something to be left, potentially, to different state governments putting in place different arrangements across state borders. So these travellers will be subject to arrangements that have been determined by our government. Hantavirus, over the last 24 hours, has been listed as a human disease under the Biosecurity Act, which means it can now be subject to quarantine orders that will be made.”
“There has, as I think all members of the House understand, been an outbreak of this virus on a cruise ship, Hondius , in the Northern Hemisphere. There have been five Australians—four Australian citizens and one permanent resident—as well as a New Zealander impacted by that outbreak, as passengers on the cruise ship. Yesterday, I reported that there had been eight reported cases of this, from cruise ship passengers, and three deaths. Very sadly, overnight that number has increased and there has been a report of a French national being hospitalised after returning to France and being currently in a critical condition. Now, those five Australians and that New Zealander are in the process of being repatriated to Australia overnight. They were flown from Tenerife to the Netherlands. They are in good health.”
“Thank you to the member for Solomon. I know how proud he is of his beautiful community in the Top End in the Northern Territory, but I also know how particularly proud he is of the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre that has been headquartered in Darwin for almost a quarter of a century. Most recently, he's talked with pride about their deployment of a field hospital to east Katherine to help that community during the recent floods—just one example of almost 25 years of service from those terrific personnel. We'll be relying on their services to help deal with the hantavirus outbreak as well. Hantavirus is a very, very rare virus for humans, and even rarer still is the transmission from human to human. But, where it does happen, we know it can be a very serious, even deadly, disease.”
“This provides, again, around-the-clock support for people who want access to information that will help them deal with that level of distress. From this week they will also have access to low-intensity therapy delivered by qualified professionals—without a GP referral, without any out-of-pocket costs and backed by the Medicare system. That is what a stronger Medicare plan looks like.”
“Today I'm really delighted to announce that we're rolling out an equivalent program for mental health distress. When we talked to mental health experts on coming to government, and when we've read reports like the Productivity Commission report, it's been clear that Australia has had, for some time, a significant gap in the mental health supports available to Australians. That gap is for relatively low-intensity support for moderate levels of distress. This can often be as a result of one of those life events we all go through: relationship breakdowns, job losses, bereavements and such. Sometimes people can get through those periods with the support of their family and friends. At other times they need some professional help. Today we're moving to the next level of our Medicare Mental Health Check In program.”
“But our Strengthening Medicare agenda is more than just bulk-billing. It's also about implementing new models of care that respond to the needs of Australian patients today. I'm really proud of the 137 urgent care clinics that we've promised to Australians. About 134 of them are already operating seven days a week, extended hours, providing high-quality urgent care to people for non-life-threatening emergencies. The other three will be opening in coming weeks. We also, on 1 January, kicked off 1800MEDICARE, which ensures that Australians have a qualified nurse at the end of the phone to give them high-quality health advice 24/7, 365 days a year. And, if the nurse thinks that it's appropriate, the patient can be referred for a free GP telehealth consult between 6 pm and 6 am seven days a week.”
“Today I want to talk about the government's agenda for strengthening Medicare. It won't be any surprise to Australians to know at the core of that agenda is turning around the bulk-billing rates that were in absolute freefall when we came to government in 2022. For Labor, bulk-billing—being able to see a doctor whenever you need to rather than when you can afford to—has been the beating heart of Medicare, and we've been fighting that fight for four decades. I am sitting next to the member for Macarthur, who started practice on the first day of Medicare's introduction, and, even back then, we had to fight for bulk-billing, fight against a Liberal Party who, in John Howard's words, said it was 'an absolute rort' and, frankly, fight against doctors groups at the time as well.”
“That's 12 months of delivering on our commitment to strengthen Medicare, changing the lives of and making a real difference to millions of Australians.”
“Today I particularly want to say that the Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention and I were delighted to announce the next phase of Medicare Mental Health Check In. It's a service that's convenient, free and backed in by Medicare. From this week, that service will also provide Australians with low-intensity therapy services online or over the phone with qualified professionals. That's particularly for Australians who are experiencing more moderate or more temporary episodes of mental distress. That means better care for them, of course, but it also takes pressure off the higher intensity mental health services. Importantly, there is no need for a GP referral. Importantly, there are no out-of-pocket expenses. Importantly, it is high-quality care backed in by Medicare.”
“We didn't expect to get to that number until 2028, but we are there already. I'm pleased to say that, in the member for Griffith's electorate, the number of 100 per cent bulk-billing practices has doubled since November. We're also delivering new models of care to better meet the needs of modern Australia. Today we've got 134 Medicare urgent care clinics open for business, delivering high-quality urgent care for people who have non-life-threatening emergencies. More than 2.7 million Australians have been fully bulk-billed. On 1 January 1800MEDICARE opened for business. It is delivering high-quality health advice 24/7 365 days a year as well as a referral to a free telehealth consult with a GP after hours on weeknights and right across weekends if the triage nurse thinks that's appropriate.”
“I thank the member for Griffith. She's made a terrific contribution already in her first year in this place. I know that in health that contribution is very much shaped by her time as the CEO of the Kookaburra Kids Foundation, a terrific service that supports kids who are impacted by family mental illness. By the time parliament returns, it will be a year since the last election. We have been busy delivering on all of the promises and all of the commitments that we made to the Australian people back in May last year, including to strengthen Medicare. Central to that particular commitment was the record investment we made to turn around bulk-billing on 1 November. Already more than 3,600 general practices across Australia are now bulk-billing all of their patients all of the time.”
“So for it to be on the PBS now is just an absolute game changer for women … Ben Hale, who was there with his daughter Jessica, is a head and neck cancer survivor who's had a recurrence of that cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy now. He said: … it is just a huge relief to go. I'm not going to be thinking about the financial aspects of it going forward. And the wonderful Allan Bridges, who's a renal cancer survivor, was also there and he said: I actually wrote to the Health Minister's office … requesting … that it be added to the PBS … He told the media: I don't take any credit for putting it on the PBS— perhaps he should— but I'm very pleased … it gives people in my position hope, hope for the future and that's the best thing. I couldn't have said it better myself.”
“It covers locally advanced cervical cancer, it covers renal cell carcinoma, the most common form of kidney cancer, and it also covers locally advanced head and neck cancer. Those are relatively early stage cancers compared to the current listings of Keytruda. Today that treatment costs those patients more than $15,000 for every single infusion; from tomorrow it'll cost just 25 bucks. We think that more than 10,000 patients every year will benefit from that listing. The member for Boothby and I were joined by three of those patients on Sunday—three terrific Australians. One of them, Anita Modlinski, who's a cervical cancer survivor, said: … when Dr Sukumaran told me … the cost, my heart sunk. I thought, how could this drug that's going to save lives cost so much … ?”
“I thank the member for Bennelong, who is a very big supporter of a stronger Medicare, particularly the Medicare urgent care clinics at Ryde and at Chatswood servicing his community. He's also a great source of advice on medicines policy because he works so closely with that industry, so much of which is headquartered in his electorate, in Ryde, affectionately known as 'pill hill', and also out at Macquarie Park. One of those companies, Merck, is the sponsor of a blockbuster immunotherapy called Keytruda, which is already listed on the PBS for a number of cancer types. I was delighted on Sunday to join the member for Boothby and the new South Australian health minister at the Flinders Medical Centre in Adelaide to announce a new listing for Keytruda that covers three new cancer types and takes effect tomorrow.”
“They all know the cherished value of the PBS, bringing the best medicines from around the world to Australia at affordable prices for patients.”
“Yesterday, I met with leaders of the myeloma community, including the president of Myeloma Australia, Jeff Browne, who AFL fans will remember as the former president of the Collingwood Football Club. We've forgiven him for that because he does such great work in his community! He was here with clinician Hayley Beer and Professor Simon Harrison, both from the Peter Mac Centre, not just giving me advice and insights but, I know, meeting members and senators across the parliament, across the political divide. I thank people for taking those meetings and them for coming to parliament. People like Jeff and the much-loved Sandy Roberts are the public face of this community. But, behind them, literally hundreds of patients, family members and clinicians drive this vigorous community seeking to battle this insidious disease.”