Husic, Ed, MP

Mr HUSIC (Chifley) (19:10): We all know that Australians have for quite some time enjoyed, relative to world standards, a very strong standard of living. It is an envied position built off the back of hard work—initially sweat and tears from our forebears but in more recent times we have made a lot of great advances through mind rather than brawn. In recent decades, Australia and Australians have earned the reputation of being able to innovate, drawing on our skills in the sciences, and advances in healthcare, in particular, have given us a great deal to be proud of. Many in the rest of the world, not just here in Australia, are better off as a result. We boast a long list of scientists, researchers and doctors who have been recognised internationally for their brilliant gifts to the world. Fred Hollows and Dr Victor Chang may be household names here for their life-changing, pioneering advances in sight or heart transplants but there are many other Australians who have been lauded internationally for their work to make the world a better place. You do wonder, though, how we will be able to achieve continued success in this realm given the coalition government has seen fit to not even have a science minister, and what we have seen since the coalition came into government is a deliberate walking away from Australia being the smart country. Everywhere you turn you can see assaults on advances in innovation, sciences and research—for instance, we have the massive $114m cut from the CSIRO's budget. While Australian governments of all persuasions over the past 60 years have backed Australia's scientific advancement, that has changed in just a matter of months under this new government. Last year, the Labor government introduced the Intellectual Property Laws Amendment Bill 2013. It did so in response to Australia becoming a signatory in 2007 of the World Trade Organisation's Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPS, protocol. Put simply, in what is a complex area, the bill would enable manufacturers of generic medicines to apply through the Federal Court for a compulsory licence to enable them to manufacture and export a patented pharmaceutical product for the purpose of addressing health crises in developing nations. Not everyone is as lucky as us and not every nation has the capacity to produce medicines to combat medical emergencies within their borders, so the TRIPS protocol is an important one. It is just one, but everyone should have access to medicines which could see them live longer or get healthier—that is a basic human right and should not be a privilege for a minority privileged few who are fortunate enough to have been born in a developed nation. Let us not be mistaken, patents are a good thing—they present just reward for ingenuity and hard work. If it were not for patents, pharmaceutical companies would simply not be able to venture down the path of further advancement—it would be cost prohibitive and in many cases fruitless. But with the issuing of patents comes responsibility—a global responsibility—and generic medicines, while leveraging off the hard work of those who have gone before, are essential to meet a need in countries where the ability to produce their own medicines simply does not exist and probably will not for some extended period of time. While Australia has previously committed to the TRIPS protocol, it does require legislation and that is why we are debating this issue here again in the House today. There is no argument that intellectual property is the end result of millions of dollars of investment in research and development by private entities and is, rightly, carefully guarded as a reward for that hard work. However, we are not talking about a new type of retractable hose or a state-of-the-art line of new house paint here; what we are talking about is medicines that have the potential to save countless lives in countries whose geography means, through no fault of their own, access to these pharmaceuticals has not been possible or has not been easy. HIV-AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other conditions continue to claim millions of lives around the world. Ebola is the latest virus to send fear around the world and devastate thousands of families in West Africa; horrifically, it has been predicted that it has the potential to affect one million people by January, which is truly a staggering statistic. It is only right that signatories to the WHO's TRIPS protocol, such as Australia, are able to export patented medicines under compulsory licence to countries in need. Australia has always been a proud humanitarian leader and this is another string to that bow. In simple terms, Labor and the coalition have offered up 'the same model car' in these two bills more than a year apart; the few differences are largely cosmetic. There is, however, one notable alteration to the bill that was introduced by us. When drafting the intellectual property law amendment legislation and introducing it into this place last year, we sought to clarify Crown use and its operation. Crown use means the government can use a patented innovation without having to gain the owner's authorisation. Crown use would be invoked when it is in the public interest—in other words, for the service of the Commonwealth or a state. It would prevent laborious, time-consuming negotiations around licences. The intent of this bill is to address the issues of gene patents and the crucial area of health care. Unfortunately the coalition has seen fit to remove the Crown use provisions in the 2014 amendment bill. I also intend in relation to this bill to draw to the attention of the parliament and the public a very bad habit that has plagued the Abbott government during its first 12 months in office—that is, backflips. When the IP amendment bill was introduced into this place in March last year, the then member for Indi, Sophie Mirabella, in her shadow ministerial capacity, stated: To put it mildly, this bill represents another example among many of poorly conceived legislation and poor drafting from the government. She continued: It is very clear that the preparation of this bill has been both rushed and botched and the coalition cannot in good conscience simply let this go through in its current form. Well, what a difference a year makes. In his second reading speech, on March 19 this year, the member for Paterson stood in this place and said: I note that, when in government, the opposition supported the progression of these matters. Therefore I look forward to the opposition's support for this bill. Well, Abbott government, the message is clear that, unlike you, Labor will not simply oppose for the sake of opposing. You definitely own the patent on that! In June last year almost 70 members opposed the second reading of this bill, only to reintroduce it themselves in a very similar form this year. So we will not be opposing the bill. I just want to touch briefly upon some other IP issues. This issue is important. We have responsibly sought to ensure, particularly in relation to pharmaceuticals, that we can work constructively in this space. Obviously this bill represents in large part what we put to the House last year. We seek to ensure that those millions of dollars in investment that I referred to are properly protected and guarded and allow us to benefit from the medicines that come out of that. It is not always the case, though, that IP is used for such noble purposes. I have had a great deal of concern when it comes to the use of IP measures to not necessarily protect R&D but, rather, to allow companies to protect old business models in the face of change. Certainly in the technology space, particularly in digital software, we have seen companies seeking to use IP provisions as a way to ensure that they can price discriminate across boundaries. If we are to ensure broad support for investment in this area and not have IP laws undermined through piracy, through breaches of copyright, then we do need to ensure that companies also behave in the right way in response, that they do not use these mechanisms in a way that buttresses profits instead of ensuring the free movement of goods and services. Last year the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications, of which I was a member, brought down a report that tried to deal with this area. The government sat on the final report for more than a year, without moving on it. The issues that were dealt with by that report have ensured that the government has been forced to deal with the issues individually—copyright reform, which the Attorney-General is trying to deal with; profit shifting, which the Treasurer is trying to deal with; and piracy, which the Minister for Communications is trying to deal with—but all of these issues intersect. Certainly in the IP space, this has been used as part of a broad array of issues to buttress profit and not allow for the freer movement of goods and services in a way consumers can support. We have seen the government being forced to deal with these issues separately instead of dealing with them in a coherent and unified way. Again, if they are serious about these issues they will respond to the report. Certainly you would hope that the Minister for Communications would respond in that way. However, I suspect that, as is often the case in the minister's portfolio, it is not the minister who calls the shots but the Prime Minister's office, who are not necessarily great advocates of innovation and supporting technological change in this country. And you would be concerned about where things would head from there. On the issue of IP, we certainly hope that this legislation does secure assent through both houses of parliament and that we are able to make an advance here. You would also hope that the next lot of developments that we would expect from our scientific community will be supported through adequate funding, through recognition at a federal level by having a minister who can champion their cause—an actual science minister—and by ensuring that higher ed reform proceeds in such a way that we do not squeeze people out of training and development and going on to capably represent the nation in the research sphere. We need to make sure that the next lot of brains get trained up and put to good use to develop the types of things are at the heart of this bill. One would hope that we would be able to see further advances off the back of ingenuity within this space rather than relying on larger advanced nations to do that work. That would also have an impact on the way that product is distributed in this country. As I said before, the opposition stands ready to work with the government on this bill. We said we would not oppose the bill, although we do have concerns about changes to the Crown-use provisions that we had inserted in the bill last year. Be that as it may, we believe that the overall objective is very important. That is why we will not be opposing this bill.