- The Guardian
- Issue #2160
Have you taken any medicine in the last week/month/year? How useful was it? How much did you need it? How about the people you care about – did they need any medicine? These sound like strange questions in Australia, because most of us are used to being able to get the medicine we need when we need it. For most people, it’s affordable, although the PBS scheme which makes our medicines affordable could do with a lot of improvement (see Guardian #2139).
We take these things for granted in Australia, but we shouldn’t. There’s the menace of Trump and tariffs, as US pharmaceutical companies eye the PBS scheme. Australia’s relatively inexpensive medicines annoy the USA’s pharma giants because they’re a standing argument for the US to have cheaper pharmaceuticals. Albanese has said he’ll stand firm on the PBS. We’ll see. He doesn’t have a good record of standing firm.
The other reason we shouldn’t bank on our medicines being cheap and accessible forever is that Australia is at the mercy of global supply chains. Australia imports 90 per cent of its medicines. According to the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, there are 400 medicines in short supply in Australia. 30 are classed as critical. These are medicines with a life-threatening or serious impact on patients.
This country mainly makes vaccines and some generic medications. Another thing that makes our medical supplies fragile is that most of the raw ingredients are also imported. If there’s a shortage of one ingredient, it can affect the supply of a range of finished products. So one way or another, our medications are at the mercy of international supply chains and large overseas manufacturers. If there’s a global shortage, those manufacturers will prioritise larger markets and put Australia at the back of the queue.
There’s an obvious solution. We should be making what we need here, or at least be ready to ramp up production when the international system lets us down. As a first step, we should renationalise CSL. The Commonwealth Serum Laboratories was founded in 1916 and was wholly owned by the Australian government for most of its successful career. It had an important role in the production of penicillin and antivenom. It developed pioneering treatments to protect blood products from HIV.
Faced with such a successful enterprise, a neoliberal Labor government flogged it in 1994. Now CSL is another large company whose legal duty is to make profits for shareholders. Benefit to Australian health comes second.
Australian governments like to talk about sovereignty. They should practice what they preach by renationalising CSL and putting it to work giving Australia independence when it comes to health. This is not a utopian or impractical demand. Most people reading this editorial grew up with CSL as a publicly owned company working for the benefit of Australians. This country could have a world-leading pharmaceutical industry that works to give people here security when it comes to health. As it stands, a lot of Australians are one international crisis away from severe health risks.
A neoliberal objection to nationalising CSL is that Australia is a “small market.” It’s true that 28 million people isn’t a large population compared to the USA, India or China, but life isn’t all markets. Cuba has a population of about 10 million people. The Cuban Institute of Molecular Biology, operating under a savage and long-lasting blockade, made five working vaccines against Covid during the pandemic and continues to do groundbreaking work with Alzheimer medication.
Australia is a prosperous, educated country. There’s no reason why we couldn’t have sovereignty and safety when it comes to medications.
Let’s take back CSL!
