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Speaker 1: Now on FARMAC, I mean, I think we can all

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Speaker 1: see that the NATS staffed up with stuffed up the

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Speaker 1: thirteen cancer drugs announcement on so many levels. Right, they

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Speaker 1: should never have promised the specific drugs because that's farmac's job.

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Speaker 1: And then having promised them, and in the first year

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Speaker 1: of the government, they shouldn't have broken that promise by

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Speaker 1: leaving them out of the budget. And then after that

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Speaker 1: it's never really a good look as that if you

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Speaker 1: finally get dragged to delivering on your promise because of

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Speaker 1: public outrage over it. But having said all of those things,

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Speaker 1: sometimes I think we can get a little too caught

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Speaker 1: up in the political shenanigans and not focus enough on

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Speaker 1: the end point. How good is the end point? I mean,

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Speaker 1: we have just had the single biggest injection of cash

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Speaker 1: into FARMAC ever. We've had more cancer drugs than ever

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Speaker 1: promised to be delivered in one go that announcement yesterday

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Speaker 1: are fifty four new drugs that wiped more than a

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Speaker 1: third off farmac's wish list. Between the six hundred million

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Speaker 1: dollars that was given yesterday and then the one point

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Speaker 1: seven billion dollars that was announced in the budget, this

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Speaker 1: government which hasn't even been in power for nine months,

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Speaker 1: has just managed to pump two point three billion dollars

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Speaker 1: into farmac. Now, I'm of the view personally that farmac

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Speaker 1: is one of the most important things that any government

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Speaker 1: funds is it's literally the difference for some people between

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Speaker 1: life and death. And then those people are people who

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Speaker 1: more often than not have actually paid their taxes diligently

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Speaker 1: and just been good people and good normal law abiding

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Speaker 1: keywis I think deserve access to as many drugs they

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Speaker 1: can save their lives as anyone else in the Western world.

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Speaker 1: I will never ever complain about Farmak getting more money.

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Speaker 1: However we end up in the weird situation that they

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Speaker 1: get more money. So in the end, I'm actually weirdly

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Speaker 1: grateful for national stuffing this up, because we've ended up

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Speaker 1: funding fifty four new drugs that we didn't have funded

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Speaker 1: only a couple of days ago. And isn't that the

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Speaker 1: thing that actually really matters the most. For more from

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Speaker 1: Heather Duplessy Allen Drive, listen live to News Talk said

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Speaker 1: B from four pm weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.