Mr LEE(5.40 p.m.) —Mr Speaker, you will not be surprised to learn that I strongly disagree with the remarks that have been made by the member for Makin (Mrs Draper). Perhaps she might, on reflection, think that she has been a bit insulting in the way that she has expressed herself tonight. She might give that some thought between now and next Monday and perhaps give some people an apology when she returns, because I can assure the member for Makin that not only have I been to more than one nursing home but I have been to dozens, not the least being when my grandmother was in a nursing home in my electorate.

As recently as last week I was visiting one of the hostels in my electorate, Rosemary Lodge, which does an excellent job of trying to look after several dozen local residents in a situation where no doubt many of them are under a great difficulty. One of the reasons almost 100 people turned up at Rosemary Lodge last week was that many of them have a lot of questions. Many of the residents at Rosemary Lodge and the other hostels in the Bateau Bay area have been inundating my office with questions and queries about how the government's new aged care policy will work.

I did not organise this meeting. The meeting was requested by the residents because they are very confused about the policy which the government has introduced. Bringing in the bonds on 1 October was bad enough, but the confusion that has been caused by the new daily fee that will take effect on 1 November is causing a lot of distress. Several residents have been told that, because the department has not yet assessed their income and assets, they will be charged the full daily rate of $420 a week or more until the department gets around to assessing what the proper daily fee should be. At the very least that should be sufficient justification for the government to at least delay again—perhaps for the third time—the date on which that new daily fee will take effect. But tonight I actually came in to speak about the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Mr Pyne —Well, get on with it.

Mr LEE —It is rather difficult when you get an insulting speech such as that given by the honourable member for Makin, and I think her ridiculous remarks tonight were worthy of some response.

The reason I wanted to raise the National Health and Medical Research Council was that it is really quite disturbing to read some of the articles which are now starting to appear. For example, as recently as last Saturday we had an article in the Sydney Morning Herald under the headline `Despair as NHMRC slips into disarray', and it has a number of quotes from a number of Australians who are very prominent in medical research expressing concerns about delays in the appointment of members of the council, delays in a number of important papers being published and several other issues.

One of the reasons we are concerned about the articles is that we believe that ultimately the quality of our national medical research effort does rely on having an organisation which has international stature and is held in very high regard in Australia, and up until now the NHMRC has had that stature and has done a very good job. One of the difficulties is that the current Minister for Health and Family Services (Dr Wooldridge) still has not got around to appointing all the members of the various committees. In particular, we do not have the Australian Health Ethics Committee fully appointed even though the Minister for Health and Family Services has allegedly referred a reference on the use in the past of certain hormones on tall girls to that committee. The committee has not yet been appointed, to the best of my knowledge.

We also had quite recently the minister deciding to ignore the advice of the National Health and Medical Research Council about funding the use of the new DTPa vaccine, Infanrix, for children to be vaccinated at the ages of two, four and six months. The minister has quite arrogantly claimed that he has certain research which allows him to overrule the National Health and Medical Research Council, and yesterday in this House he refused to even refer the information that he has to hand to the council to allow the council to review that. When the minister claims that this is a fight between two large drug companies, he might actually be telling us the real reason he made the decision not to follow the advice of the National Health and Medical Research Council. I consider that decision to be an absolute disgrace, and at the very least the council should be the umpire which decides these matters. (Time expired)