PRIME MINISTER:
It’s really good to be here at the Translational Research Institute, good to be here with my colleague Peter Dutton the Health Minister. I’m really pleased to be here with Professor Ian Frazer, the head of the Institute and also with Professor Brendan Crabb who is the head of the Australian Medical Research Institutes right around our country.
We’ve just had a Budget, obviously it was a Budget for saving but it was also a Budget for building. Yes, it was a Budget that was about Australia living within its means but it was also a Budget about Australia playing to its strengths. One of our very greatest strengths is medical research. We have had a succession of Nobel Prize winners in this field. We have about one per cent of the world’s population and we produce about five per cent of the world’s refereed medical research along with sport and resources. Medical research is one of our comparative economic advantages and that as is why I am so pleased and proud that we have established this this massive medical research fund that will forever improve our capacity to do research and to translate the best research into the treatments and cures of the future.
So, yes, this has been a tough Budget but it has also been a visionary Budget nowhere is it more visionary than in its ongoing commitment to health and to medical research.
I am going to Peter Dutton to add briefly to these comments and then I believe Professor Frazer and Professor Crabb might say something.
HEALTH MINISTER:
Prime Minister, thank you very much. Thank you very much to Professor Frazer in particular and to Dr Watson for hosting us today at TRI. Thank you also to Brendan Crabb for the leadership AMRI and he represents as the Prime Minister points out medical research institutes around the country.
If you look at the history of medical research in this country when the Prime Minister was Health Minister, we dramatically increased the investment into medical research. The bricks and mortar as well as supporting the amazing young researchers and the well accomplished world renowned researchers like Ian Frazer. In Opposition, we opposed Labor's proposed $400 million dollar cut in 2011 to medical research. In this Budget we not only provide a capital protected $20 billion so that Labor can never spend that money down but we also from 2015-16 start to draw on the earnings from that fund of $20 million in that year, ramping up to another $1 billion a year to supplement that which we’ll put into medical research today.
Why is it important? It's important because we have an ageing of our population by 2050 in our country 7,500 Australians will be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and with dementia and diseases of the brain. If we want a sustainable health system with an ageing population we have make structural today. We have to make our health system sustainable not just for today and for next year but for the decades ahead. And that is what we do in this Budget.
Labor was never able to do anything but talk about health reform and Mr Rudd was on a path perhaps to implementing some health reform before he was knocked off as leader by Julia Gillard. I want to make sure that we continue as a country to play to our strengths, not just in terms of medical research but the best trained doctors and clinical staff and researchers in the country. We want to provide support to them going forward so we can have a strengthened and modernised Medicare not just as a safe for today or next year but for decades ahead. That is what this Budget is about.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thanks Peter. Ian?
PROFESSOR IAN FRAZER (TRANSLATIONAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE DIRECTOR):
I am Professor Ian Frazer, Director of the Translational Research Institute here in Brisbane - one of Australia's newest Medical Research Institutes. We aim to translate basic science from a wide range of disciplines into practical outcomes for patients and also to commercialise and innovate from the discoveries in medical research to ensure that Australia gets the future benefits from them.
We are obviously delighted to host the Prime Minister and the Health Minister this morning, and to hear from them about the Medical Innovation Future Fund which should provide a basis for taking health and medical research forward in this country to a new level and put us on the world map for the research work that we do. We are very glad to be here with you this morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thanks Ian. Brendan?
PROFESSOR BRENDAN CRABB (AUSTRALIAN MEDICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE PRESIDENT):
Prime Minister, Ian, it's… my name is Brendan Crabb, I should say, the President of the Association of Australian Medical Research Institute and Director of the Burnett Institute in Melbourne – one of the 42 Medical Research Institutes that AMRI represents.
I've just come from a room full of institute directors and university VCs and others and said that the world that we're in this Monday is a very different one to the one we were in this time last Monday. And so to a degree the announcement on Tuesday of the Medical Research Future Fund and all that was to flow from that was of course a very pleasant surprise to us and our sector and the people we represent and strive to help.
But I also said in another sense it wasn't a surprise at all. This Government and when in Opposition was group that we and others worked very closely with and came to understand just how committed they were to this sector. I recall the then Opposition Leader's Budget reply speech almost 12 months exactly to the day where medical research was the very first specific thing that you mentioned on that day. That set the tone for many other interactions that demonstrated how committed the Coalition was to medical research and we believe also this very broad support for medical research throughout the Australian Parliament and throughout the community.
But still to see it come together in such a tangible way, in a way that is nation changing, nation changing because health and medical research is one of Australia's true areas of international competitive advantage and building on that really puts Australia more and more on the map as well as services, our own community in their growing health needs as the population ages. So it's great for health and it's great for our economy and really the question is how do we work together to make the absolute most of it and we're delighted to work with you and your government to help that come about.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thanks so much Brendan. Now do we have some questions?
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, the medical research fund, was it your personal idea, did a researcher come to you or was it floated by the Department of Health? It’s a complete mystery to many of us in the community.
PRIME MINISTER:
The important thing is that this fine piece of policy has been put in place and as is often said success has many parents. And therefore I’m happy to take my share of the credit for it, I’m sure Minister Dutton is prepared, as he should and to take a very large share of the credit for it and I am prepared to give our distinguished officials some share of the credit. But obviously most of the credit should go to the outstanding medical researchers that we have in this country – really outstanding medical researchers that we have in this country and as a Government we are proud and pleased to support them.
QUESTION:
But Prime Minister, how can you guarantee that lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry won’t use a medical research fund as some kind of honey pot?
PRIME MINISTER:
That’s a reasonable point. Let me explain how it's going to work. The money will go into the locked box of the Future Fund, it will be administered by the Future Fund board of guardians, and it will be untouchable by government in the same way that the Future Fund is untouchable by government. The actual disbursement from the fund will be, as we anticipate subject to discussions with the sector, but as we anticipate will be subject to the National Medical Research Council, the NHMRC and that has a very long and strong reputation as a guardian of good research. It's researchers by and large doing the right thing by research.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister Premier Campbell Newman was yesterday asked whether he trusted you. He said you were a good friend. He said that you will ultimately do the right thing. He didn't explicitly say that he didn't trust you. Do you believe you have Campbell Newman's trust?
PRIME MINISTER:
Campbell is a friend of mine. I know him well. He is a fine man, he’s a fine Premier and I absolutely appreciate that just at the moment the premiers are fighting their corner, as they should. But I've got to fight the nation's corner. We've got to fix the Budget. We've got to fix the Budget. We inherited a debt and deficit disaster from the Labor Party. We weren't responsible for the debt and deficit disaster, but we do take responsibility for fixing it. We cannot go on as a nation borrowing a billion dollars every single month just to pay the interest on the borrowings. This is a completely unsustainable situation, if any of you have ever had a mortgage, if any of you have had a credit card debt. If you are borrowing the pay the interest on the borrowings you are stuffed and that’s the situation that our country had been put into by the former government. Now we will address it purposefully, carefully, methodically, in a very moderate and measured way, part of addressing this is going to be fixing the federation and that’s the great enterprise that I look forward to sharing with Campbell and the other premiers in the months and years ahead.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister you said earlier today that you were doing what the voters had asked you. When did voters ask for new taxes?
PRIME MINISTER:
If you remember back to the election campaign, I gave interview after interview, I did press conference after press conference and I used to bore journalist an interviewers witless with this mantra. I said that if you elect the Coalition we’ll stop the boats, we’ll scrap the carbon tax, we’ll build the roads of the 21st century and we will get the Budget back under control. Sometimes I changed the order, depending on the audience, but these were the elemental commitments that I made to the Australian people time and time and time again and we are delivering on all four of them. We are getting the Budget under control – yes, there are some very tough decisions in this Budget. But we’re not doing them to make ourselves popular. We are doing them to get our country back on track.
QUESTION:
So voters should have realised that getting the Budget under control could potentially have meant more taxes?
PRIME MINISTER:
Let's just look at the elements of that question. There is a deficit levy on high income earners, a temporary deficit levy on high income earners, that affects less than 3 per cent of taxpayers and, yes, motorists will pay fuel excise indexation and in the first year that will impact on the average household to the tune of 40 cents a week. Now, I don't underestimate that – I don't underestimate that. No-one likes to pay more, but let's keep all of these things in perspective.
QUESTION:
But, Prime Minister you must accept that there is a trust issue out there? The poll today shows that fewer than 40 per cent of those polled believe the Budget is in the best interests of the country and is good for the country.
PRIME MINISTER:
Every government that brings in a tough Budget suffers a hit in the polls. If you go back to 1996 – the last tough Budget – the Howard government, of which I was then a pretty junior member, suffered a massive hit in the polls but it was right and necessary for our country. It set us up for a decade of unprecedented prosperity and it also demonstrated that the Howard government had the political courage and the economic credentials to be a good long-term government. And I certainly would like to hope that this Budget is in the tradition of that 1996 Budget.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, [inaudible] has actually said that the Premiers have political reasons; three of them face elections during the next year. You’re saying that Premiers have elections in mind, that's why they're ramping up their campaign against you?
PRIME MINISTER:
I absolutely understand why the Premiers are fighting their corner; that’s what they were elected to do. But the Premiers understand, just as much as I do, that we do need to fix the Federation just as much as we need to fix the Budget. Fixing the Budget is the immediate objective of the Commonwealth Government, but our medium-term objective is to fix the Federation and I’m looking forward very much to working with Campbell Newman and Mike Baird and Denis Napthine and Will Hodgman and Colin Barnett and the other Premiers and Chief Ministers to bring this about.
Just on the subject of hospital funding, though, which has been mentioned a few times, for the next three years Commonwealth hospital funding increases at more than 9 per cent and in the fourth year, Commonwealth hospital funding will increase at more than 6 per cent. So, we aren't cutting funding, we are increasing funding. All we're not doing is continuing the unsustainable pie in the sky promises of the Rudd/Gillard Government.
QUESTION:
Are you disappointed that the Premiers haven't taken the bait on the GST?
PRIME MINISTER:
I don’t accept the premises of the question. What the Premiers do is ultimately a matter for the Premiers. What the Premiers seek is ultimately a matter for the Premiers, individually and collectively. My job is to fix the Commonwealth Budget in the short-term, as quickly as we can, and then of course we do have to fix the Federation and we were quite upfront about that pre-election. One of the other things I mentioned in my final Budget Reply speech, to the best of my recollection, is a Federation white paper which will try to ensure that as far as is possible in the context of modern Australia, each level of government is sovereign in its own sphere.
QUESTION:
Why won’t you just compromise with the Premiers?
PRIME MINISTER:
I am going to talk to the Premiers. I talk to the Premiers all the time, including Premier Newman. I will talk to the Premiers and we will do what we collectively need to do to put our Federation in the best possible shape.
QUESTION:
Last week you said the crossbenchers would be spared of an early election but don't the polls today show that you’re threat of a double dissolution election are without basis?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I’m always going to treat my fellow Members of the Parliament with respect and with courtesy because that’s what a Prime Minister should do and I’m looking forward to discussions with crossbench and minor party Members and Senators in the weeks and months ahead.
Our objective is to get on with good government. Australia didn't have good government for six years. It's the fact that we had a dysfunctional government for six years that has given us the debt and deficit disaster that we now need to address and I’m going to address it in a mature, adult way which includes a lot of discussion with crossbench Senators and Members. What I will never abrogate, though, is my responsibility to give this country good and strong government. That’s my job: to give good and strong government to our country. That means putting forward a sensible Budget and seeing it implemented.
Thank you so much.
[ends]