Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you to the Prime Minister for giving me the opportunity to answer the member's question. Can I say, first of all, how much we value your experience and contributions in this place to health policy generally—particularly the time you're taking to represent and advocate the interests of the medical research institute sector, which has been in the building over the last several days. You and I were both at the AAMRI dinner the other night with a number of members—at least on this side of the House—and Senator Ruston was there as well.

This is a question you've asked before, over the last couple of weeks, to me and to the Treasurer. Our position hasn't changed. I do want to take the opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to the MRFF. This is an institution of which both sides of the House can be proud. We initiated the process to set it up when we were last in government, and I had ministerial responsibility for this area. To their credit, it was put in place—and now has a capital of about $24 billion—by the former government, and, as you say, it distributes about $650 million each and every year.

I heard some remarks in a release from the member and a number of the institutes earlier today about the success rate and applicants that had not been able to receive funding from the MRFF. As the member well knows, success rates for all of the government's research funds are well short of 100 per cent, so well short of 100 per cent of good, worthy applicants are actually able to receive funding. I think, actually, the MRFF has a success rate above the others. It's about 30 per cent and has been about 30 per cent through the course of its time. The ARC, I think, has a success rate closer to 20 per cent. The MREA from the NHMRC has a success rate of 15 per cent. We'd all like that to be higher, but the MRFF performs pretty well.

As the Treasurer said last week, though, I think, the government is taking this very seriously. As I said and the Treasurer said, we are pulling together a single, united, national health and medical research strategy under the leadership of Rosemary Huxtable AO, former secretary of the finance department and former deputy secretary of the department of health.

I can't believe the Leader of the Opposition is interjecting about health and medical research, but such is life. Once that strategy is delivered as a final document—and it will be very shortly—we will use that and the 10-year statutory review of the MRFF, which the Treasurer and the Minister for Finance recently received and published, to consider a range of things, including the matter that the member has now raised a few times in question time over the last couple of weeks and that was the subject of quite some advocacy by the medical research institute sector as well.

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