Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to conclude, I hope, the debate on the National Health and Medical Research Council Amendment Bill 2006 and to thank both the member for Lalor and the member for Fairfax for their contributions. I particularly thank the member for Fairfax for putting on the record in this place some of the achievements of the government in the field of health and medical research.

This is actually quite a simple bill. It implements the administrative recommendations of the Grant and Wills review of health research funding programs. The essence of that review was that the National Health and Medical Research Council needed to be made more clearly independent of government and, while the CEO of the NHMRC will certainly be reporting to the minister, and while the government will certainly be funding this organisation, some of the lack of clarity in who was reporting to whom will be dealt with by this bill. Of course, the other half of the Grant and Wills review recommendations was a very large increase in National Health and Medical Research Council funding. I am pleased to say that, as a result of the budget, that has now been substantially delivered.

I think we can say that, while it has taken some time for the recommendations of the Grant and Wills review to be fully implemented, they have now been substantially implemented. I know that both of those two gentlemen are very happy not only with the NHMRC governance changes which this bill implements but with the very large increases in research funding which the government announced in the budget.

I should just briefly respond to the second reading amendment that has been moved by the Manager of Opposition Business. I accept that, had this amendment been moved prebudget, there may well have been some justification for it, but I think that it is wholly unjustified subsequent to the budget announcements.

There is a suggestion in the member for Lalor’s amendment that there may be some problem with future appointments to chair the Australian Health Ethics Committee. I am not in a position, at this time, to announce the new chair of the Australian Health Ethics Committee, but I can certainly assure the member for Lalor and the House that the new appointment will be someone of impeccable credentials and long and distinguished service in this area. I can also assure the House and the member for Lalor that the incoming Chief Executive Officer of the National Health and Medical Research Council, Professor Warwick Anderson, is an absolutely outstanding scientist and an absolutely outstanding administrator. He was in fact offered an equivalent position in a country which is normally regarded as rather larger and more important than Australia, but he declined that offer to take up the position of Chief Executive Officer of Australia’s NHMRC.

I think that we have long been extremely well served by our health and medical researchers. I think that not only Australia but the wider world has been immeasurably improved by the work of Australian medical researchers, stretching back 100 years or so. It is impossible to fully estimate just how many tens if not hundreds of millions of people worldwide have been saved because of the work stemming from the research of Howard Florey. And while he is, justly, the most famous Australian medical researcher of all time—the Bradman, if you like, of medical research—there have been many others in the past and there are many today who are carrying on that fine tradition, and I hope they are somewhat assisted by the measure that I trust the House will shortly pass.

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