Page 1962 - Week 05 - Thursday, 5 May 2011
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
You know how bad it was when she took it out before the budget, she snuck it out, she took out the trash on the royal wedding day, the day she could guarantee it would get the least amount of coverage possible; she leaked out, “This is what we are going to do with the new hospital.” And what was it? It was back to where we were 2½ years ago—no change. What we are going to do is invest in Calvary hospital—nothing new, 2½ years of distraction and wasted time when she should have been focusing on emergency departments, on elective surgery, on GPs, on preventative health, on mental health. And what do we see? Wasted time, wasted effort; distraction from Treasury, to health, to Calvary, to the community. It is disappointing for everyone. If you look at the budget, it is a difficult budget to find much that takes us away from the downward spiral that we find in terms of many of the outcomes that we are getting from our health system.
There is one sector in the budget that I think we can all agree on—this is not directly from the ACT budget but I have been looking for a time to address this issue, which is one of vital importance—and that is medical research, the vital issue of medical research. There are rumours—and they have not been squashed by the federal minister, Nicola Roxon, or by the Prime Minister—that $400 million is going to be cut from medical research over the next three years.
The impact is twofold. Nationally, it will take years to recover from that, if they do take that money out. Locally—and this is where it hits us—it would be a disaster for the John Curtin School of Medical Research. That is a crown in the jewel of the ACT. Many of us spoke to the condolence motion for Frank Fenner. If he could hear and if he knew what was being let out by federal Labor about planned cuts or rumoured cuts to medical research spending, he would be turning in his grave.
Australia and the John Curtin School of Medical Research have a very proud history that has directly contributed, through the medical research that they have conducted, to saving millions of lives around the world. I will just give you two examples. Sir Howard Florey, who was the Australian driving force behind the discovery of penicillin, and Frank Fenner, the man behind the eradication of smallpox, have saved many countless millions of lives.
The director of the John Curtin School of Medical Research, Professor Julio Licinio, has been a strong and eloquent voice in opposition to these rumoured cuts. I met with him, along with a number of his key research staff at the John Curtin School of Medical Research, recently and I left convinced that to make these cuts would be utterly reckless and would ultimately mean that people who would otherwise be cured of disease would die as a result. It was the professor who said recently in the media, and I paraphrase, “It is illogical to fund roof insulation one year and then cut medical research in the next.” He set up a website for project Australia for medical discovery. I recommend that members visit that website and see what he has to say. I am sure that they will then feel as passionately as I do about this.
I take this opportunity, minister—and it is good that you are here in the chamber—to ask you, to plead with you, to communicate directly with the federal health minister, Nicola Roxon, and say to her that there is tripartisan support, because I think that
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video