New-generation cancer drugs to be subsidised under $1.3bn budget promise

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Health minister Sussan Ley has announced the four-year funding for drugs approved for the pharmaceutical benefits scheme.
Health minister Sussan Ley has announced the four-year funding for drugs approved for the pharmaceutical benefits scheme. Photograph: Jawad Jalali/EPA

Australians with cancer will have access to new generation drugs as part of the federal government’s pledge of $1.3bn for new medicines.

The health minister, Sussan Ley, announced the four-year funding for drugs approved for the pharmaceutical benefits scheme.

She confirmed the government would push ahead with plans for a $20bn medical research fund despite scrapping the $7 co-payment that was expected to inject most of the cash.

Ley said she expected the $20bn to be reached by 2020 and Tony Abbott appears to be looking to the pharmaceutical supply chain for the bulk of the funds.

Labor welcomed the addition of new medicines to the PBS but urged the government to ditch a four-year freeze on Medicare rebates cutting $1bn from general practice.

The government is expected to reveal its long-awaited childcare package on Sunday, coinciding with Mother’s Day.

Scott Morrison, the social services minister has already announced a nannies subsidy and an $850m package targeting disadvantaged children. The new early childhood safety net will include extra subsidies for families and communities to set up childcare facilities and a program to attract staff to work at them. The childcare package will be tied to family tax benefit cuts, a measure that stalled in the Senate.

Tuesday’s budget papers will also include an extra $333m in federal support as part of an expanded package of measures designed to stimulate local economies.

The opposition’s agriculture spokesman, Joel Fitzgibbon, said the $333m drought package was a reannouncement of a failed policy, and the $250m within it for concessional loans was already-announced money not spent because farmers either had not or could not access the loans. But he welcomed the other drought measures.