Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Hansard source

I refer to the government's intention to establish a Medical Research Future Fund, and the repeated delays in establishing this fund.

The government promised the fund would be established by January 2015, which would have required legislation by November 2014. But they only introduced legislation in May 2015 and then tried to rush this through the parliament to meet the revised target date of August 2015. The Senate has now decided that this bill requires proper scrutiny—quite properly in our view—ensuring that the legislation will now not come before the Senate until after the 1 August reporting date.

Minister, why did the government take over 12 months from the first date of announcing this fund to bring legislation before the House? Was this due to the fact that officials from the minister's department at Senate estimates confirmed that they only became aware of the government's intention to establish the fund several weeks before it was announced? I also refer to evidence provided at Senate estimates, that Australia's Chief Scientist and the National Health and Medical Research Council were not consulted on the fund or its establishment. Will they now be consulted at all times before distributions are made from the fund?

I also refer to the fact that, while the bill which established the MRFF was before the House, the government was amending its own bill even before it had been voted on to include:

The Australian Medical Research Advisory Board is established to determine the Australian Medical Research and Innovation Strategy and the Australian Medical Research and Innovation Priorities. The Health Minister takes the Priorities into account in making decisions about the financial assistance that is provided from the Medical Research Future Fund Special Account.

Minister, why was such a reference only included after the bill had been tabled before the parliament and only after the Labor members of parliament had pointed out that the bill made no reference to the promised advisory board?

I further refer to the fact that when Labor raised in parliament the omission of any reference to the role for the health minister in the Medical Research Future Fund the minister ridiculed this, insisting a bill to promote medical research was a finance bill, not a health bill. Can the minister therefore explain why the government has now amended its own bill to insert 40 references to the health minister? The amendments to the bill refer to the government taking into account the recommendations of the Medical Research Advisory Board but do not require the government to actually follow these recommendations. Ultimately, it appears that the funding from the MRFF is still determined by the finance minister, which opens up the prospect of grants being made not on research grounds but on political grounds. Can the minister guarantee that at all times grants will be distributed based on expert advice to promote medical research and not on political grounds? Given that the MRFF will not now commence until sometime after its already delayed 1 August revised date, can the minister give assurances that the budgeted distribution will still be delivered in full this financial year? Finally, can the minister confirm that the MRFF will not impact on existing medical research funding and give a guarantee that the MRFF funding will add to and not in any way replace existing budgeted funding for medical research?

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