PRIME MINISTER:
It’s really good to be here at the Victor Chang Institute. It is great to be with the local member Malcolm Turnbull and the Minister for Communications. It’s also good to be here with the Health Minister, Peter Dutton.
This is one of our really outstanding health and medical research institutes. Australia has a good number of world-leading, world-beating health and medical research institutes and we want these institutes to be even more successful in the future than they've been in the past.
As you know, a couple of weeks back we brought down a Budget. It's a Budget for saving but also a Budget for building. It's a Budget for living within our means but also a Budget for playing to our strengths and that's why such a significant part of this Budget, even in fiscally difficult times, has been investing in infrastructure and in particular investing in medical research.
As a result of this year's Budget we will have a world-leading medical research future fund which will help to ensure that institutes like this can continue to give us the breakthroughs that result in the treatments and cures of tomorrow.
So, I'm excited about the Budget, I'm particularly excited about the impact that the Budget will have an institutes like this. I'm going to ask Peter Dutton to say a few words and then ask the local member, Malcolm Turnbull, to say a few words.
HEALTH MINISTER:
Thanks, PM. Thank you very much to professor Bob Graham and also to Mathew Grounds – all their work here at the Victor Chang is quite amazing and an inspiration to all Australians and that is true of many institutes around the country.
At the last election we promised to increase money to medical research. We put $200 million into dementia research and $35 million into Type 1 diabetes clinical trials and out of this Budget we have provided great hope not just for the discoveries which will be necessary with an aging population but also certainty for funding for our institutes, for our young researchers and that brings with it huge economic benefit. The multiplier of medical research is significant particularly in transforming economies like in South Australia and there is huge export potential out of our money that we invest into medical research.
So, I'm very pleased to be here today and very proud to be part of a Government that has such a long-term vision to ensuring that $20 billion is preserved into perpetuity and that it will fund about an extra billion dollars each year of medical research and I think that's what all Australians want from their Government is the ability to deal with the problems of today but keep an eye on what the future holds for our country and we've delivered that in this Budget.
COMMUNICATIONS MINISTER:
Thank you very much, Tony and Peter. It is great to have the Prime Minister and the Health Minister, my very good friends here in Wentworth, here at the Victor Chang – one of Australia's leading medical research institutes. Here on the St Vincent's Hospital campus where there is so much great research being undertaken. As the Prime Minister says, this is not a Budget just about cuts or savings – it is a Budget about growth. If we want to grow, if we want to remain a competitive, dynamic economy, a prosperous economy with a generous social welfare safety net, then we have to be smarter, more technologically sophisticated, more competitive. We have to move further and further up that scale of technological advancement and smarts and that means more investment in medical research. The medical research fund that has been announced in the Budget is one of the most visionary steps in building not just a healthier Australia but a more prosperous one, building the technological future that will ensure the prosperity of our children and our grandchildren in the years ahead.
QUESTION:
That was quite some list of requests and questions that Robert Graham put towards you. Do you have a strategic investment plan for the medical research fund?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, this is the kind of thing that we will be consulting on in the weeks and months ahead because the fund will build up over time and the spending will build up over time. As you know, the fund itself will be administered by the governors of the Future Fund and our intention is that the vast majority of disbursements from the fund will be in the hands of the National Health and Medical Research Council. We are open to ideas, though, and that's what round tables like today are all about. They're about making sure that we consult as closely as we can with the best minds in this area to ensure that we maximise the value from this money.
QUESTION:
Did the Victor Chang institute give you any idea of what they think of being tied to the co-payment?
PRIME MINISTER:
You heard Professor Bob Graham say that he thought this was visionary, innovative policy that this would help to ensure that Australia remains an absolute world leader in this area in the decades ahead. So, I do very much refer you to the comments that Professor Bob Graham made at the beginning of the round table.
QUESTION:
How have your meetings with the Senate crossbenchers been going, considering you're planning on flying out later in the week. You must be confident in those discussions so far?
PRIME MINISTER:
They have been really get-to-know-you meetings. I have already met some of the crossbenchers, obviously some have been in the Parliament and I have dealt with them quite extensively in some cases but nevertheless, it is important to restart these relationships given that from 1 July we will have a Senate of quite a different complexion. Obviously, our absolute focus, come 1 July, is getting rid of that carbon tax, getting rid of that mining tax, getting the Australian Building and Construction Commission re-established so that we can absolutely deliver on the commitments that we took to the people last September.
QUESTION:
Are you planning on offering income tax cuts during your term of government?
PRIME MINISTER:
I am planning on getting our Budget bedded down. We've just brought down a Budget. It is the most substantial Budget in two decades. This is a visionary Budget as well as a courageous Budget. It's the Budget that we need for these times and that's what I'm focused on now.
QUESTION:
Peter Dutton, you said before that the co-payments, that there's no room for negotiation on that. What about the other measures of the Budget that seem to be getting some negative reaction, is there room for changes to those areas?
HEALTH MINISTER:
What we've done in the health portfolio is to increase spending each year which was the commitment we took to the election and, importantly, within that we're increasing funding for hospitals each year as well. So, next year hospital funding will increase by 9 per cent and 9 per cent the year after and 9 per cent the year after that. We are determined to deal with the debt and deficit disaster that we inherited so people in medical centres, people in hospitals around the country know that with a billion dollars of borrowed money each month just to pay the interest bill we need to deal with that so we can get further investments into health and medical research in the years ahead so we've struck that reasonable balance within this Budget and if we do that we can strengthen Medicare going forward and that's really the objective that I had in relation to the reforms we've introduced in health portfolio in this Budget. If we do that with an aging population we'll continue to have an even better health system going forward with a stronger and more sustainable Medicare.
QUESTION:
So, on no account you'll be dumping the co-payment if it seems cross-benchers won't support it in the Senate?
HEALTH MINISTER:
Well, as I said the Labor Party at the moment is talking about spending more money and denying the fact that the country is in enormous debt. If they continue to do that and the expense continues to mount that we spend in Medicare, then Medicare will topple over and Labor has no account at all as to how they are going to provide for Medicare going forward. Ten years ago we were spending $8 billion a year on Medicare, today we spend $20 million billion a year. Our design in this Budget, through the co-payment, is not only provide money into the $20 billion a year medical research fund but $2 of the $7 goes to supplement the doctor’s income that they would otherwise get from Medicare. So, it is about strengthening Medicare as we go forward.
PRIME MINISTER:
If I can just add here, there are all these complaints from the Labor Party making allegations of unfairness but if it's right and proper to have a modest co-payment as part of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme – why isn't it also right and proper to have a modest co-payment as part of Medicare? We don't say that the PBS co-payment somehow undermines the universality of our health scheme. So, why should the Labor Party be able to get away with these claims that the Medicare co-payment somehow undermines the universality of Medicare? We know that in their hearts a lot of Labor people think this is good policy. We've got the Labor Assistant Treasurer who's been spruiking for years in favour of a co-payment. We had Bob Hawke as Prime Minister who brought in a co-payment, we had Brian Howe as Deputy Prime Minister and Health Minister who brought in a co-payment. We had Jenny Macklin as Brian Howe's adviser when a co-payment was brought in. We had Labor introduce co-payments in the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. No one likes to pay more, I accept that, but this co-payment is an important structural reform and if we are serious about making our world-class health system sustainable for the long run, this co-payment is an important policy advance.
QUESTION:
At this point, how do you rate your chances of getting the GP co-payment through the Senate?
PRIME MINISTER:
I don't expect contentious Budget measures to have an easy passage but I do expect them to gain a passage and we'll work constructively, we'll work respectfully with other people, crossbenchers in the Senate, to try to ensure that we get the best possible outcome. Governments get their Budgets through. That's what governments do and sometimes there might be a little bit of refinement here and refinement there but Budgets are passed by the Parliament and governments do get their Budgets through and that's what I'm expecting.
QUESTION:
So, is the Health Department's phone line jumping the gun in saying that it will be introduced in July?
PRIME MINISTER:
This is the Government’s intention – it is the clear intention of the Government and it's right and proper that Government agencies should tell people what the Government policy is. That's exactly what the Department's phone line was doing. So, I commend the Department for precisely and accurately doing its job which is to tell the people of Australia what the Government intends and it's good that we are getting straight information from the Health Department as opposed to the lies and misinformation that people are getting from the Labor Party. Really what you're getting from this Government is a careful, considered, honest and decent attempt to come to terms with the debt and deficit disaster that Labor left us. All we're getting from the Labor Party and Bill Shorten is a chorus of complaint. He has become, I regret to say, Australia's whinger-in-chief and I think the people of Australia are entitled to better from the alternative Prime Minister.
Thank you.
[ends]