Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I will respond to a couple of comments that have been made, including about the Greens. The first thing to clarify is that, although the government may seek in its budget papers to make a number of cuts to other areas of health to fund this, those proposed cuts are completely independent of this fund. They will continue to be opposed in the Senate and elsewhere, just as we helped stare down the GP fee that was intended to be one of the primary mechanisms for funding this in the first place. We have a position of supporting the fund without supporting the way in which the government proposes to fund it.

On the question of cuts, I think neither the government nor the opposition comes to that with clean hands. I recall one of the best demonstrations that I have been at. I have been at a few, but one of the best of them was to see 5,000 scientists and researchers in their lab coats turning out on the steps of the state library in Melbourne when it was suggested, proposed and leaked that the former Labor government was going to cut funding to health and medical research. The Discoveries Need Dollars campaign put health and medical research on the agenda in a way that it had not been before.

The message that came out of that very, very clearly from scientists and researchers—who would much rather spend their time doing their research and who do not want to be subject to the vicissitudes of the political cycle, because so much of this research goes on over cycles that are much longer than the three-year electoral cycle and certainly the yearly budget cycle—was that they wanted some secure funding to know that having a career in health and medical research in Australia was something that would be a good thing, that you could rely on some security and that you would not have to go, year by year every time the budget comes around, and worry about funding being cut.

Directly as a result of that pressure came a positive move from the last government, which was the McKeon review. It said: 'Let's sit down and—rather than dealing with this on a year-by-year basis, which just makes everyone feel incredibly uncertain—let's have a look at what would be a good, long-term plan to secure science and research and now the medical field in this country.' The McKeon review came up with a number of very, very good recommendations. It was not just this government who ignored it; the last government ignored it as well. They commissioned it and then it sat in a draw. They did not even go to the election promising to implement the McKeon review, whereas the Greens did. The Greens sat down, read the McKeon review and came up with a number of costed initiatives that would put health and medical research on a secure footing.

One of the things that came out of the McKeon review was that there is a gap in Australia—there is a gap. On the one hand, we have got very, very good funding and peer reviewed funding coming through the National Health and Medical Research Council. The McKeon review suggested that that be strengthen. But what it also said is that once you have finished that research and once you have done that, then is there a big gap when it comes to trying to translate it and then not only to translate it but also to potentially commercialise it as well. Unlike in the UK, for example, where there are billions of dollars set aside in various trusts and unlike the US where there is much greater investment as well, including philanthropically, there are not the places to go to in Australia to take those good discoveries that might have come through NHMRC funded research and then translate them once you have passed the proof of concept stage. There is also the second valley of death, if you like, identified in the McKeon review, which was the commercialising of them. How do you commercialise them and ensure that then the benefits stay inside Australia? It is those gaps that have been ignored up until now.

The government came along in the last budget with a proposal for a medical research future fund. I think it has to be said that it was almost certainly something that was cooked up very quickly to justify the GP co-payment—that is what it was. It was almost an afterthought for the GP co-payment. There was a suggestion that if we do this, then somehow people will swallow paying more to go to see their doctor. Well, they did not. We managed to see off the GP co-payment, although the pause in indexation is meaning that it is coming in many ways through the back door. We managed to see that off.

But out of the ashes of that, we managed to make sure in this parliament that we did not throw the baby out with the bathwater. A good idea in essence—of let's find ways of coming up with additional funds for health and medical research that meet those gaps, that do not duplicate the NHMRC and that allow for the translation and then potentially commercialisation—was able to be sustained.

Now, some of the criticisms are right. (Extension of time granted)

Out of that, I think it is fair to say that initial legislation did not pay sufficient attention to how you might fill that gap. That is why, in the course of the Senate process and in the course of the Senate inquiry, as well as in the debate, we have focused on a couple of matters. Firstly, as I said before let's make sure that this is additional money. And let's make sure that it is not duplicating what the NHMRC does but instead is working in tandem with what the NHMRC does. If it does that—if it steps into the gaps that have been identified in the McKeon review—then it will be a good thing. As I said before, our preference would have been to fund it directly rather than to have to put aside a couple of billion and then just take the interest off it to put into medical research. Why not give the money directly to medical research in the first place?

Nonetheless, this is what the government has proposed. We feel that we have been able to fix it and to make it better so that, hopefully, it means that Australia finds itself in a similar situation to the US or the UK, where there is some security and some funding that will fill the gaps.

Under the last government—and it continued under this government—we have seen spending on science and research and development fall to the lowest amount since we started keeping records in the late seventies. If this goes some way to getting us up from 2.2 per cent of GDP spent on R&D back towards three per cent, ideally, and then, hopefully, up to the four or five per cent that some of our trading partners are, it will be a good thing. We will be keeping a watchful eye on it as well, to ensure that the money goes where it is meant to go. That is why it is important that the review mechanism is built in. I think the member for Ballarat is right that it is important that there is a much greater integration with the NHMRC to ensure that there is not overlap, and to ensure that the two are dovetailing. If all of that works, it will be a very good thing.

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