Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Medical Research Future Fund Bill 2015 and related bill. You will see a difference between the contributions on this side of the chamber and those on the government side of the chamber during this debate. On the government side of the chamber they will talk in glowing terms and platitudes about how wonderful medical research is. And who can deny that? It is a very good thing. Labor in government invested a record amount of money in medical research. It is a very good thing. On this side of the chamber we will agree with them in relation to that. But on this side of the chamber we will criticise the process by which this legislation came to this place and we will criticise what they are actually establishing and how it will operate—so there will be no forensic or detailed speeches in relation to what this fund will look like and how it will eventually be carried into effect—as the shadow health spokesperson, the shadow assistant health spokesperson and the shadow parliamentary secretary did, and as I will do now.

When this particular bill was conceived, I have to say it resembled something you might see in a conversation between Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey Appleby in a Yes Minister episode, or, indeed, something you could imagine in the bowels of the Prime Minister's policy and media unit in the episodes of The Hollowmen. I am really worrying and wondering if any government spokesperson or member will actually use the phrase 'future-proofing medical research', as we heard in that infamous episode of The Hollowmen. When this fund was announced it caught just about everyone off guard. Even the Commonwealth Chief Scientist, Professor Ian Chubb, told the ABC that the government had not even bothered to consult him beforehand. If the government spent months laying the groundwork for what the Treasurer would describe as the biggest medical research endowment fund in the world, you would imagine he would have consulted his own Chief Scientist. But, no, they did not have a science minister at the time in the government, and they must have misplaced to the Chief Scientist's telephone number, or even his mobile number. The reality is the government has not spent any time planning for its Medical Research Future Fund. It had not consulted stakeholders. Apparently it was kept inside the bowels of the government and it would seem that the fund was cooked up in Treasury and Finance without the input of the Department of Health, and certainly without the input of the NHMRC or any other important stakeholders who you would think had some interest in medical research.

It was announced in the 2014-15 budget to detract from the cavalcade of cuts and broken promises that that particular budget perpetrated upon the Australian public and our health system. The government was amazed that there was a lukewarm reaction to the billions of dollars it said it would put into this future fund, because what they did was slash funding for public hospitals, cut $400 million from preventative health funding, cut about $165 million from Indigenous health funding, cut half a billion dollars from the public dental programs and also made cuts to drug and alcohol rehabilitation services. Curiously, after I leave this chamber I am going to a House of Representatives committee meeting on Indigenous affairs for an inquiry that looks into the harmful effects of alcohol in Indigenous communities. And yet, they cut that funding from Indigenous health programs and they cut the funding for drug and alcohol rehabilitation services.

Any residual enthusiasm for the fund evaporated immediately when people realised the impact that the Abbott government's GP tax would have on their health system and on their family and individual health. Australians are unlikely to fawn over a fund when they are required to put in either seven dollars or five dollars each time they visit the doctor or take their sick kids to the doctor. In an electorate like my electorate of Blair, where the bulk-billing rates are currently at about 92.2 per cent, you would not expect people to be bashing on my electorate door in Brassall Shopping Centre in Ipswich saying, 'Gee, Shane, I think it's about time you actually got on board with this medical future fund. It's the right thing to do.'

I have to tell you that I am in the middle of doing my country shows in my electorate—it is a regional and rural electorate—and I can tell you, having been there till 9 o'clock at night for two nights and 6 o'clock the next night, and doing country shows in places like Lowood and Esk, no-one has come up to me and said, 'Gee, it's great that they have cut all this funding from health and hospitals so they can put it into a future medical research fund. Gee, that is a good idea, Shane, you should be voting for that in parliament. Isn't that a great idea!'

This Medical Research Future Fund had a pretty rough start, as I said before. Never mind that they slashed all that funding. Never mind that they failed to consult. What they have done in this legislation bears almost no resemblance to what they talked about in their glossies or to the wonderful glowing terms used by the Prime Minister, the Minister for Health and the Treasurer in what they had to say about this Medical Research Future Fund.

What do we see in the legislation? We see a stark lack of proper governance processes and procedures. There is no evidence at all that the government put any policy work in place when they established this fund. It does not even live up to the government's own principles, declarations and descriptions. There is no peer review whatsoever. There is no independent oversight at all. It does not look like they have considered this. It does not look well crafted and it does not look consistent with the public policy announcements they made earlier. It is more evidence of a government in chaos and confusion in terms of decision making.

Let us have a look at what the legislation says. The bill states that the health minister could—I said 'could'—request the National Health and Medical Research Council, the NHMRC, to manage fund disbursements, but it does not obligate the minister to do so. So it is possible, if not probable, that the NHMRC will be bypassed by the minister. The minister can delegate responsibility for disbursements to institutions such as universities or medical research institutes. But the minister responsible, whoever he or she may be at some stage in the future, is not required to do so.

The processes described in the bills provide little oversight of the disbursements from the fund, a fund initially to have $13.9 billion and to grow to $20 billion. In its current form, any government could fund any project, regardless of merit, provided that project meets the purpose of the legislation. That is why Labor is seeking amendments in relation to it. Projects can be funded without oversight from an independent advisory panel. There was supposed to be one. Where is it in the legislation? There is no peer review process and no obligation to consult the NHMRC. The government has claimed that the advisory board will provide advice on the disbursal of the funds. If that were so and if it were integral to the efficacy and the effectiveness and, indeed, the efficiency of the legislation, if it gave it substance and credibility, the advisory board would be in the legislation. But it is not.

Another big concern is that any government in the future can direct funds itself for its own political purposes. It could be that some future government of either political persuasion could use this fund as a slush fund to assist in marginal seat campaigning. It is possible, under the way this legislation establishes this medical research fund. These bills enable the finance minister to credit funds to the COAG reform fund for making payments to the states or territories for expenditure on medical research or medical innovation. The finance minister can also direct credits to the fund's health special account to grant financial assistance to medical research institutes, not-for-profit organisations, universities and corporations.

However, this is consistent neither with the government's own claims about how the fund would operate nor with how it was ever envisaged to work as declared by the government when they took us all by surprise and established this fund. When the government announced the fund it promised:

Fund earnings will be directed to medical research, primarily by boosting funding for the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).

The bills before the chamber do not reflect that intention. Another concern is a very broad definition of 'medical research' and 'medical innovation' in the bills. There remains this lack of clarity about which savings have gone into the fund so far. Are those savings invested from those in the 2014-15 budget? We do not know. It is going to grow to $20 billion, and then the earnings from this fund will be disbursed for whatever reason the government wishes, lacking fundamental governance structures in the way the government said it would not.

The legislation is simply ripe for pork-barrelling. You can just imagine it happening, and you can just imagine the ANAO doing a report at some future time in relation to this, just as the regional rorts of the Howard government were castigated by the Auditor-General after 2007. It is deeply concerning the way this legislation was—

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