Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the amendments (9) to (21) and (23) to the Medical Research Future Fund Bill 2015. Unfortunately, I did not get to speak during the debate as I was cut off, as I have been on numerous debates recently, by a government that is supposedly intent on letting us speak and be heard in this place about such important things as the Medical Research Future Fund.

I reject this notion that the amendments are spurious, because what we have before us is a deeply concerning piece of legislation. On the whole, Labor is happy to support the notion of a Medical Research Future Fund. Indeed, I and the member for Scullin have spent the last 12 months speaking to everybody in the medical research field. We have spoken to them one on one, because we discovered that the government had announced this wonderful medical fund accounting trick—as many people have referred to it, particularly Ross Gittins in The Age. They mentioned the accounting trick in the budget but had not consulted with anybody. The member for Scullin and I have been out, at the request of the shadow minister for health and the member for Ballarat, Katherine King, to actually talk to people in the field. I have talked to everybody in Victoria, where there are a huge array of medical institutions and hospitals, particularly in my electorate, where there are the Monash Medical Centre and Monash University. My own electorate is home to a vast array of NHMRC funding and terrific work is done there. But we discovered a range of concerns and areas of issues that were not addressed in this bill.

But what is more concerning is that we have had 12 months, from the last budget to now, for the government to get out there and talk about it and set up a fund that will work. What we found is that, no, they actually have not established a fund. They have just picked up what was in the Future Fund and called it medical research—badged it. That might work for other things, but this is an area where peer review is paramount and where we need standards set and we need governance. There is no governance in this legislation, so, again, it is very concerning. Without a means for oversight, for an independent advisory panel with a peer review process, and without consulting the NHMRC or even distributing funding at arm's length through the NHMRC, the government, for all intents and purposes, can direct funds from the MRFF to any of its pet projects. It might not even need to be within the medical research area.

So, yes, we are setting up a fund that is meant to go into medical research, but how are those funds being channelled? The bill is fairly silent on that. The community is concerned because, again, the government has not consulted them. If we go back to when the fund was put out in the budget, the media reports said that one of the real surprises of the budget from last year—not this year—was the creation of the Medical Research Future Fund, which was to be partly funded by the introduction of the $7 GP co-payment. Theoretically, that co-payment has gone, but this injected money provides an opportunity to think strategically about the role and direction of Australia's medical research effort. That effort is a really good thing to think about, and where the money is going and where it should be used—that is, in translational medicine, in health services or in mid-career research. There are a raft of areas where the medical research community is crying out for support, assistance and guidance. But, again, this bill does not give any of that guidance, support or information. Health services research was a central part of the 2013 strategic review of health and medical research, the McKeon review, commissioned under the previous Labor government, and has been called for in the 2012-13 Productivity Commission annual audit, which argues:

Policy-making based on good evidence is central to improving community living standards.

It was also mentioned in the recent National Commission of Audit Report, which said that Australia needs to 'embed health and medical research in the health system' in order to 'improve patient outcomes and deliver efficiencies'.

So, again, there is a great need for this, but there needs to be a strategy about how we are embedding this research into the current medical facilities so that we are not just doing more of the same. But the legislation does not tell us if we are doing more of the same or if we are not. A great concern in this space was well said by Sir Gustav Nossal, a man I do not think we can argue with:

I think this $20bn fund is very exciting but … why cut CSIRO? Why cut the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation? Above all, why cut the Australian Research Council? This is going to make an us-and-them situation: the medical researchers will be laughing and the enabling scientists in maths, chemistry, physics and so forth will be suffering. This is not good.

He said that saving the fund would give the government the chance to support the recommendations of the last McKeon committee Strategic Review of Health and Medical Research. And so it would. There is a blueprint under that medical research paper done by Simon McKeon that provides a way forward, having spoken to everybody in this space and had it supported by them, that the outlines of the McKeon review should be supported, invested in and moved upon. But this legislation does not do that. It creates a fund and then says, 'Trust us; we will deliver that fund to the people who need it.' You cannot do that in such a critical area as medical research where you need good-quality peer review.

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