Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

) ( ): Today I want to speak about what I think is a great adornment to Canberra and also our nation, and that is the John Curtin School of Medical Research. The school was founded in 1948 on the initiative of Howard Florey, who won a Nobel Prize for his contribution to the creation of penicillin. Named after the former Prime Minister John Curtin, the school was established following Florey's vision for an Australian based world class medical research school. One of the driving factors in Florey's desire to see a medical research school in Australia was the reality that many of Australia's most talented scientists and researchers were being lost to overseas institutions.

The idea of a national medical research school was incorporated into The Australian National University Act 1946, and between 1948 and 1951 the first researchers were recruited. The first four heads of department to be appointed were Hugh Ennor, as Professor of Biochemistry, in August 1948; Adrien Albert, as Professor of Medical Chemistry, in January 1949; Frank Fenner, as Professor of Microbiology, in July 1949; and John Eccles, as Professor of Physiology, in December 1951. There was, however, no building or laboratory facilities in Canberra to house this new medical research school. Florey and the team of heads of department met regularly in Canberra to lobby the government for funding and develop plans for a building, but the process was a long and difficult one as Australia emerged from the Second World War.

Nonetheless, researchers were already working away at making some of the great discoveries of medical science. They used facilities in far-flung places such as Melbourne, Dunedin, London and Oxford to do work on, among other things, the influenza virus, tuberculosis and anaemia. It was not until 1952 that temporary buildings were constructed and the first experiments and studies were done here in Canberra. Finally, on 27 March 1958, 10 years after the school was established, the permanent home of the John Curtin School of Medical Research was opened in Canberra by Sir Howard Florey, with Prime Minister Robert Menzies in attendance.

Since then, the school has been a world leader in medical research. At present, there are over 300 members of the John Curtin School of Medical Research, including staff, students and visitors. It has an operating income of $39.8 million. The John Curtin school can lay claim to four Nobel Prize winners: Sir John Eccles, in 1963, for his research on neuroscience; Peter Doherty and Rolf Zinkernagel, in 1996, for their work on immunology; and, of course, Howard Florey, who had already won his Nobel Prize by the time he came to help launch the school. One of the original heads of department, Professor Frank Fenner, was the chairman of the Global Commission for the certification of smallpox eradication in 1977. More recently, Professor Carola Vinuesa was named Australian Life Scientist of the Year in 2008, and Professor Chris Goodnow was awarded the prestigious GlaxoSmithKline Award for Research Excellence and was elected to the US National Academy of Science in 2013.

The John Curtin School has undertaken medical research on a whole range of important medical issues. The school currently has five departments: the Eccles Institute of Neuroscience, headed by Professor Greg Stuart; the Immunology Department, headed by Professor Chris Goodnow; the Pathogens and Immunity Department, headed by Professor Carola Vinuesa; the Genome Biology Department, headed by Professor David Tremethick; and the Molecular Bioscience Department, headed by Professor Angela Dulhunty. Their research aims to understand and provide novel insights into diseases including cancer, auto-immune diseases such as type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, and neurological conditions such as epilepsy and vision impairment

The researchers at the John Curtin School of Medical Research are doing real work that will have a real effect on people's lives. For example, a research team led by Associate Professor Mauricio Arcos Burgos, which has been doing work on the genetic component on ADHD, has discovered the role of a particular gene that indicates susceptibility to ADHD and how a patient may respond to particular medications. The results of this research could help identify people who may be diagnosed with ADHD and also help doctors understand what medications different patients will respond to. Researchers are also doing work on cancer treatment. Cancer remains one of the leading causes of death in Australia and it is important that we continue to strive for treatments that help manage the disease and possible cures. At the John Curtin School, researchers led by Dr Anneke Blackburn are working on treatments with less toxicity than current cancer treatments. It is hoped particular drugs will be able to slow the growth of cancer, meaning patients need less toxic treatment, which will lead to better health outcomes.

Another significant area of research is heart disease and, in particular, hypertension—one of the leading risk factors for heart disease in the world. Hypertension is a complex condition and no single drug is effective with all patients. Professor Caryl Hill has led research in exploring the molecular mechanisms of high blood pressure that can lead to hypertension. Dr Hill hopes to develop a new drug that targets certain previously untreated molecular processes to deal with hypertension.

We are all aware of the serious HIV and AIDS problem around the world. Researchers here in Canberra, led by Dr Charani Ranasinghe, are working on a vaccine that will deal with the HIV virus at the molecular level. This research is in its early stages but success could mean millions of lives saved around the world. These are just a few examples—there are many more—and all of these research projects will result in genuine health outcomes for people not just in Australia but around the world.

I had the privilege of visiting the John Curtin School of Medical Research last month and got a glimpse of the world-leading work these scientists are doing. I met the current Director, Professor Chris Parish, and learnt about how they are taking real steps to make sure that we can continue to lead healthy and productive lives. As they look to the future, the John Curtin School of Medical Research has two great initiatives in the pipeline. As a legacy of Canberra's centenary last year, the school has established a Chair of Cancer Research that will further expand and develop the already strong work the school is doing in cancer research. That position will be filled by the end of this year. The school is also launching a new Centre for Personalised Immunology that will bring together some of Australia's top researchers and clinicians to explore improvements in diagnosis and individual treatment of patients with immunological diseases.

However, it is not all good news for the John Curtin School of Medical Research. They, like many medical research facilities around Australia, face an ongoing uphill battle to keep up with the increased costs of research and the real issue of new young researchers being lured overseas looking for more funding to find the treatments and cures of the future. This is the same problem Howard Florey identified when the John Curtin School of Medical Research was just an idea. That is one of the reasons that the government's $20 billion Medical Research Future Fund is so important for the future of our nation. The government understands that healthcare costs are not limited to what a patient pays or does not pay at the doctor or at the pharmacy. Healthcare costs are also affected by preventing and curing diseases and coming up with more effective treatments for medical conditions. To make that happen, we need to fund institutions like the John Curtin School of Medical Research and others around the nation.

In the coming decades, Australia faces many challenges with an ageing population and the rising cost of chronic illness. Investing in medical research will help us deal with those challenges. Australia-wide, we have a health and medical research sector worth around $6 billion that employs 22,000 people, with a further 12½ thousand postgraduate students engaged in research. This is a $20 billion investment into that research sector and into the health system. We will draw on the earnings initially in 2015-16 to provide $20 million a year to supplement the almost $800 million a year that we spend on medical research today, ramping up to a billion dollars by 2022-23, which will be a considerable health and economic benefit to Australia.

For over 60 years, the John Curtin School of Medical Research has been proof that investment in medical research can and will deliver on real-world health outcomes. When it comes to the legacy of the school, it is not just the prizes we should consider; it is the countless lives that have been saved, and will be saved, due to the work being done in this city. This government believes in the ingenuity and enterprise of Australians, and the John Curtin School of Medical Research is testament to that spirit. I thank and congratulate the director of the school, Professor Chris Parish, and his team for the work they are doing, and I look forward to seeing where their world-class research takes us forward in the coming decades.