Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

I want to from the outset make a few remarks. The Labor Party will be supporting these amendments, as we did in the Senate, and we will support the passage of the bill. But let us be very clear about what has happened here. The initial bill as presented in this place had not got any input from Health at all. So we have managed through the processes here in the House and the Senate to deal the health department and the health minister in, because they were not in before. We have managed through the processes in the House and the Senate to get some better integration between this bill and the NHMRC. But Labor's view is that it is not enough. It does not meet the government's own stated budget papers as to what the purpose of this fund was to be. The budget papers state that the money was to be predominantly paid through the National Health and Medical Research Council. When the fund was envisaged—and I think it has to be acknowledged that this fund did not come out of the health department or out of health policy and that in fact it was thought up through a separate process—and when it was eventually disclosed to the public that this is what the government was planning to do, the government stated that it was going to be funded and that it was going to utilise the NHMRC processes to disburse this money. That is not what it has done.

This bill is an improvement on what we had previously, but I do want to make it very clear that a Labor government would seek to amend it, to put the purpose in place very clearly that we think that expert and peer review is the only way we can make sure that we get the best quality health and medical research in this country. The sidelining of the NHMRC will, I think, be something that will be looked upon very poorly in years to come. So we will of course be watching the decisions the government makes about the disbursements of these funds. I remind the House that in fact the former CEO of the NHMRC, Warwick Anderson, stated very clearly that when judging how to use public money for research only peer review can identify what is valuable and what is not. He went on to say: 'NHMRC's almost 80 years of effective ethical and efficient service to the Australian community means that public trust in the Medical Research Future Fund will be maintained if the NHMRC plays the major role in administering the earnings of the fund in accordance with the advisory board strategy.' That is the former CEO of the National Health and Medical Research Council, and we agree with him. We absolutely agree with him. I want to make that clear.

This has been an extraordinarily poor policy process from the outset. What has had to happen through the course of the debate about this bill is that Labor has had to try and force the government into a position where it considers the policy parameters under which it funds health and medical research. It was not thought through. The initial bill did not contain any advisory structures. It did not contain any expert opinion at all to try and look at what the best strategic direction was. It had no links to the National Health and Medical Research Council and very little role at all for the Minister for Health, the health department or health policy makers; this has had to be done through the process. I think it is very disappointing that the Senate did hold an inquiry. Obviously, a deal had already been done between the Greens and the government on this bill, so Labor had to try and prosecute some of this on its own. The government paid very scant attention to the many, many voices in the research community who said that this is not the way to go.

We do know there are a lot of powerful and vested interests in this space. We all get them coming into our office on a regular basis. It is why we have the National Health and Medical Research Council and peer review to determine what the best medical research is going to be. It is why politicians do not get to decide. I think the danger in this bill is that some very powerful voices have been listened to and some less powerful voices have not been. I think that that is going to be, in the longer term, to the detriment to health and medical research. I do want to put on record that we, when in government, were very strong supporters and we will continue to be so. (Extension of time granted)We will continue to be so both from opposition and from government, should we ever be fortunate enough to form government again.

Equally, it would be entirely remiss of me to not remind this place of just where the money for this fund has come from and of the extraordinary divide that this government has put on those who at the front-line of our health services every single day, providing services to people who are coming into general practice surgeries, who are seeing specialists and who are trying to get access to medicines. The money has come from funding cut from prevention, funds from the freeze on the Medicare Benefits Schedule and funds from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme changes, which will make harder for people to access medicines. I have to say that those changes have not passed the Senate and are not likely to, but that money is still being counted as being within this fund. All of the cuts to health and to direct services to people are where the money for this fund has come from. It would be remiss of me not to say again to the government that: we support medical research, but at what cost have you done this—at what cost to direct service provision for people across the community who are already feeling the brunt of the MBS freeze when they go into general practices across the community?

Labor, as I said, will support these amendments. I want to again point out that it is an unusual circumstance to have a government have to move in this place some 22 amendments to its own legislation and in the other place 20 amendments to its own legislation. It stuffed it up, basically. It did not do the work. It had not actually consulted about what this policy would look like and what would the best disbursement process would be. It made absolutely no reference at all to McKeon, which is the review into medical research. The fact that there was no discussion about how you might leverage this funding off philanthropic organisations, off other business or off other capacity to build capital is a missed opportunity, and an opportunity that McKeon outlined should be pursued. Again, this is a missed opportunity to go through the recommendations of McKeon and see how this funding could leverage the actual outcomes for those recommendations. No reference by the government, in this entire Medical Research Future Fund process, has ever been made to the McKeon review.

Again I put on the record that, whilst we will support these amendments, we do not think that this is the best way that this fund could have been established. It is not the best way nor the most transparent way. Without peer review, without expert review and without a clear and transparent process for disbursements, this is not the best way that this fund could have been administered. Obviously, we are not going to pursue further amendments here in this place, but we will be watching the government very closely as it starts to make announcements in relation to this fund—particularly in an election year. We want to make sure that the reputation of health and medical research in this country is maintained. We want to make sure that it is not just the most powerful voices that get access to this fund. We want to make sure that it is not just the voices that manage to get the ear of government or the support of government that get access to this fund. Access must be on the basis of what is the best quality health and medical research and of what is going to make the most beneficial difference to this community.

Again, I say to the government that we remain happy to work with you on sensible health reforms that will improve health outcomes in this country. In our view, you have missed an opportunity with this Medical Research Future Fund. It has been an incredibly poor process, as shown by the way in which the bill has been managed through both chambers. We are pleased that we have managed to get health dealt into this bill. It is something that you should have done from the start. We are pleased that we at least managed, through the Senate inquiry, to have some of the broader voices of the medical research community heard. We will support the bill and we certainly remain very strong supporters of medical research.

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