Bandt, Adam, MP

Mr BANDT (Melbourne) (19:34): Australia is going to need to have something to sell to the rest of the world when the rest of the world tells us to stop digging. We are going to need an economy for the 21st century when the mining boom is over. We are never going to be able to compete with China or India on wages. The strength of the Australian economy in the 21st century is going to be based, in large part, on our brains. That means doing everything we can here from this place to ensure that our scientists, our researchers and our businesses are well placed to develop the innovative products that will sustain us in the 21st century. You hear some similar rhetoric coming from those on the government benches as they rise to support this bill. You could take the government somewhat seriously were it not for one simple fact: under the Abbott government, spending on science research and innovation is at its lowest since records started being kept in the 1970s. We are seeing this played out right here in this parliament now. At the same time as this bill, supposedly to advance and promote the innovation system in this country, is being debated, the government is also seeking support in the Senate for a bill that would cut the research and development tax concession for companies with turnover above a certain amount. What the government does not seem to understand is that that will not just affect those large companies, because many of those large companies that get that concession commission research to be done by smaller companies. So it is an attack on not just a handful of companies; it is, in fact, an attack on the innovation ecosystem in this country. The government is coming at it with a another attack. As well is that first attack to limit who can get the R&D tax concession, the government is also wanting to reduce the rate of the R&D tax concession. They are saying, 'We need to cut it by 1½ per cent because we are also at some stage in the future going to cut the company tax rate by 1½ per cent.' What is astounding, in a budgetary scenario that only those in the government could have dreamed up, is they are cutting the research and development tax concession now without any legislation at all to cut the company tax rate. They are saying to people, 'You can already start receiving less to do research and development in this country.' This bill has to be seen as part of a package of legislation that is about attacking the research and development and innovation system in this country. Added to that is the budget, the horror budget that people all around the country are turning their backs on—because they know that it is not only a budget that attacks the young, the old, the sick and the poor but also a budget that attacks the smart. At the same time as we are debating this bill here, hundreds and hundreds of jobs are being lost from CSIRO. Just as we have one speaker from the government side saying it is wonderful that we have advanced manufacturing in Australia and how we need bills like this in order to support it, at the same time in Victoria a quarter of the workforce, in areas like advanced manufacturing, is going. Not only are they working out how to do more with less and, in some instances, using 90 per cent less raw material to produce the same machine part compared with existing methods of manufacture; they are also engaged in the kind of advanced manufacturing that would form the support for areas like the biotech industry. It is the biotech industry that I want to talk a bit more about because of its crucial importance to the Australian economy and the failure of this bill and the other budget measures to adequately support that industry. What we know—certainly in Melbourne, but right across the country—is that developments in health and medical research are good not only for people but also for the country and the economy. Since 2009 Australia has made more every year exporting health and medical related products than exporting cars. Whenever the car industry gets in trouble, it is front-page news—and justifiably so—because so many people's livelihoods depend on it. Yet governments think nothing of cutting several hundred million dollars at a time from health and medical research budgets or from the research and development tax support that sustains much of that industry. In Melbourne I have visited some of the research institutes, universities and companies that are performing world-leading research activity. We have the potential, for example, to be producing bionic pain relief devices out of Melbourne that will relieve various kinds of pain, in the same way that we have had developments in the bionic ear. We also have the potential, coming in large part from Melbourne together with other areas, for developments in the bionic eye. Yet also, within the last week or so, we have seen Bionic Vision Australia complaining that they are not getting the support from the government that is required to sustain them. At the same time as providing the necessary support for an innovation ecosystem, which this government is failing to do, there is another aspect of Australia and Australian society that this bill ignores but that we need to preserve—that is, the public good. At the same time as ensuring our research and private sectors develop the cures and the technologies that will allow us to live healthier, longer and happier lives, we also need to ensure that access to those cures and technologies is not based on money. We need to ensure that we remain a place where you only need your Medicare card—and not your credit card—to get good health care. To do that we need a government that is not only sensitive to supporting the innovation ecosystem—as this government is not—but also capable of supporting the public good. Over the last few years, groups of people who have been denied access to the treatments they require have come to governments and asked, 'Can you please help us?' When they have been unsuccessful, they have gone to the courts. They have gone all the way to the High Court. In one case, those who were restricted from accessing cancer treatments formed a group, Cancer Voices, and, together with many others, commenced litigation. At various stages they succeeded; at various stages they did not. They ended up in the High Court and they lost in the High Court. Along the way there were a number of attempts to deal with this issue: on the one hand, how do we ensure that we are developing world-leading research and cures—and giving companies the incentives to develop them—while, on the other hand, ensuring that the benefits of those discoveries, which are in large part supported by the taxpayer, are made available to everyone and to those who need it? Whilst the litigation that was associated with certain kinds of gene therapy was concluded in a way that was adverse to the plaintiffs, the question has not gone away. The question has not gone away, because there will be new kinds of research, cures and technologies that will be developed, hopefully by Australian companies, and people who will say they do not want their access restricted to those cures and technologies just because they cannot afford it. They will say they want the Australian public health system to support them in that. They will want to make sure that patent laws do not restrict their right to get good quality health care, because, in a rich country like Australia, everyone should be able to access good quality health care. You should not be turned away because of wealth or because of our laws. It is incredibly disappointing that this bill, which comes in the context of an attack on the innovation system generally, also fails to grapple with the other side of the equation—that is, what we do about making sure the cures, research and technology are available to everyone? This is going to become increasingly important. You only need to look around the world at the moment to see that on one side of the world we are facing a crisis with Ebola, while here in Australia we have researchers who have the capacity to contribute to stopping the spread of that disease—and also, potentially, curing it—or at least being able to vaccinate people against it. Now, how do we ensure that governments, the representatives of the public of Australia, have access to that? The last time a bill like this came before this parliament, it attempted to grapple with that issue. That is because what all of the inquiries along the way found was that from both sides of the ledger—from the company side of the ledger, as well as from the public side of the ledger—one of the things that proved a bit of a stumbling block was the so-called Crown use provisions in this legislation. What we heard was this: patients saying, 'The government has the power by law to take some of these discoveries and make them available to the general population, but they are just not doing it.' One of the reasons they are not doing it is because, although there is quite a wide ranging power for the government, there is actually no process set out in the legislation. Even if you wanted to do it, you would not know how to do it. That is what we found as we lobbied ministers—so the evidence went. We tried to lobby ministers, we tried to get them to do the right thing, and they said, 'This is a very rare power. It is really used, so I am not going to use it on this occasion.' On the other hand, you have the company saying that because it is such a wide ranging power they find that it mainly comes up when they get government departments coming to them and saying, 'We have got the power to take your invention or your discovery and use it. We have got that power sitting in our back pocket, so let's sit down now and negotiate an appropriate rate to purchase your discoveries for their use in the public health system.' In the context of that, something that is crying out to be resolved is not only that problem that we saw during the breast cancer dispute and the Cancer Voices dispute but also the problems that are likely to come up again, again and again. That is because as there will be more and more new discoveries and as people's expectations—legitimately so—of better health care increase, these debates are going to continue. We have an opportunity now to put in place something that might stop that kind of future litigation. It might stop people from feeling like they need to go to the High Court to get the cancer treatments that they deserve. It might also give the companies the security that they need to know that Australia is a good place to do their research. That is because once we have either kicked this government out or changed their mind and got them to lift the spending on science research and innovation in this country, these companies will see Australia as a good place to come and continue to do their work. They will also know that they have the legal security to do it. To that end, I will be moving some amendments in the details stage. The purpose of the amendments is to distil those last few years of disputes, to distil those last few years of litigation, to hear the legitimate claims of the industry and to hear the legitimate claims of patients and say, 'Let's put in place a simple process so that if people want to access these Crown use provisions because they believe that the invention is not being distributed fairly, then there is a simple process set out in the legislation to go to the minister. 'It is not going to give the minister any extra powers, so the industry should be comfortable with that. What it will do is do what the patients have been asking for, which is provide a way to make sure that the innovations that are developed here in Australia are not restricted and kept by a few when they could be saving the lives of many. I hope that the government will consider these amendments. I hope, indeed, that the opposition will as well. I submit to the House that they strike the right balance to ensure that Australia will become an innovation powerhouse and continue to lead the world in areas like health and medical research. As we lift our discoveries and as we lift our economy, it ensures that we are also lifting the standard of public health. We can have both. It is not beyond the wit of this House and this parliament to find a way for us to have both. I will commend, at a later stage, the amendments to the House.