Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology. Can the minister confirm that, more than a year since this pandemic started, the only money the Morrison government has spent on mRNA vaccine manufacturing has gone to consultants, not scientists?

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, on indulgence: I would like to congratulate the Leader of the House on his ascension. Every cloud has its silver lining!

I thank the member for his question. The mRNA technology that he is referring to has of course been the subject of a McKinsey report into the capability and capacity for domestic manufacture. I know that there is limited ability to give some context, but I think it is important for the House to understand a couple of things about messenger ribonucleic acid vaccines. They are a free form of protein, mRNA. The vaccines essentially trick the body into producing some of the viral proteins itself. In considering a potential domestic manufacture capability for Australia, there are three very critical features to this new technology.

The first is that it is a very, very new technology. The second is that the production and manufacture of that technology at scale is very complicated. It requires the production of a synthetic version of the mRNA that uses the virus to build infectious proteins. The proteins must remain solitary. Once put into the body, they then create some of the virus molecules themselves, and the immune system detects those molecules.

The third issue is that it is very likely that this type of technology could become the next generation in immune science. There is no doubt about that, but it is still absolutely cutting-edge. So for everyone listening today: the first mRNA technology which has found its way into the bodies of human beings has been in the context of COVID. We have approached this issue, with all of its complications, I think with both confidence and realism—confidence that Australia can and should have a domestic manufacture capability here but with some realism that it is not a simple process. It's not a process, as has been reported by some outlets, that would take three to six months. It's going to be a significantly longer process than that.

To understand that process, as the member noted in his question, we went through an audit last year to identify possible companies in Australia with the potential for mRNA capability. We went through an information generating process where there were 64 responses. We engaged McKinsey. They produced a final report on 21 March this year. We have gone through that report. It obviously has a range of commercial-in-confidence measures and information. It notes, I think, if I can say in summary to the House, that there is great confidence for Australia in terms of a capability to manufacture this type of technology. But to ensure that that manufacture is sustainable, that it is commercially viable and that it is at scale, that will require a breadth of manufacture not just in vaccines but in other therapeutic goods, and we are investigating that at present.