Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the minister for explaining those amendments that have now been circulated and moved in her name. But the question of detail about how these funds will be disbursed and the degree of public confidence and sector confidence that there will be around the disbursement of these funds is not mere detail—it is utterly central to the reputation of the health and medical research sector in Australia. We will not oppose these amendments, although we see them as second-class. We think the amendments that we moved and failed to pass in the House, which would see these funds go through the Medical Research Endowment Account and therefore be distributed according to normal NHMRC processes, are by and away the better alternative, but we recognise that we did not have the numbers in the House to get those through. Madam Speaker, I know that you are very familiar with the medical research sector in Sydney; can I say that it is one of the great sectors in Australia. Its reputation goes back to 1936, when Billy Hughes, who was then the Minister for Health—a man not normally praised on this side of the House—created the National Health and Medical Research Council, with the ambition for Australia to 'punch above its weight', using Billy Hughes's words. Since that time, medical and health researchers from Australia have well and truly punched above their weight. In Labor's view, one of the reasons for that is that people in Australia and people around the world have been able to have confidence about the peer review and competitive nature of the NHMRC funding process; applications for funding to conduct medical research funded through the NHMRC, funded by the Commonwealth taxpayer, is competitive and peer reviewed and has proper oversight.

These amendments certainly improve this bill from the original form, but we still take the view that the better way for this to proceed would be for the funds that are able to be collected by the government—however they do that—be put through the MREA, the medical research endowment account, subject to those age-old processes that have helped underpin the extraordinary reputation that the Australian health and medical research sector has.

We will not oppose the amendments in this House but, as the minister knows, a Senate inquiry has just commenced. I am advised that we will have some public hearings over the course of July where these issues will be able to be fleshed out a little bit more, and they will then be subject to further debate in the Senate.

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