George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was actually quite interested in the points the member for Hughes was raising there. We're here talking about the Industry Research and Development Amendment (Industry Innovation and Science Australia) Bill 2021, which relates to industry research and development, relates to manufacturing and relates to the establishment of this new brand new entity, Industry, Innovation and Science Australia, which will be looking at a range of different industries and assisting people to manufacture things, including breakthrough drugs—that's very exciting. This is why the government is putting this forward, so we can see breakthrough drugs such as ivermectin come to fruition. Perhaps when all the studies are shown and the scare campaigns are not launched against those studies and the claims, we will have an industry that we can be proud of in this country that's going to save lives through a treatment such as ivermectin.

I note that that great hub of science and innovation—again, things we're talking about here today—at Monash University, the Biomedicine Discovery Institute, is doing work that will probably lead to manufacturing that will fit squarely under the policy of the Morrison government in promoting the development of a strategic manufacturing industry here in Australia. Of course drugs which could potentially be a treatment for COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 would be front and centre for that, I would have thought. So it's really good to know that the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute actually found that in vitro—as the member for Hughes said—ivermectin stopped the SARS-CoV-2 virus from growing in cell culture within 48 hours. That's great news for innovation and industry in this country, when we—

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