Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I must say that as a doctor I am very, very disappointed by the fact that this government in the last budget had a pattern of cutting funding to medical projects and medical research. The cutting of the funding to Commercial Ready is yet another example of this. Up to 20 per cent, I believe, of Commercial Ready grants went to the high-risk biotechnology sector, where it is very hard to get private capital funding because there are not necessarily quick returns. In some cases, companies in this sector depended very heavily on the Commercial Ready program to provide them with seeding funding so that they could raise private capital against that financial base, and by taking away the Commercial Ready program this government has demonstrated its disregard for quality medical research in Australia.

Senator Carr even spoke of Australia’s high international reputation for innovation in the same breath as he was justifying the cuts to the Commercial Ready program. I find that incredible. Australia does have a very great reputation in medical research. We have had four or five Nobel Prize winners in medical research and, as Senator Abetz said in his speech today, Sir Gustav Nossal, one of Australia’s most renowned medical scientists, has been quoted as saying the decision to axe the Commercial Ready program was very regrettable. That is just a very polite way of saying that it was a totally irresponsible decision by this government.

Some of the medical programs supported by Commercial Ready have included clinical trials for treatments of cancer. In fact there are 11 such clinical trials, including one for prostatic cancer, which is very debilitating to men of course. With a very high mortality rate, it is one of the most common causes of death in men. It is very important that we find a way of treating it; cutting the funding for that trial with the axing of the Commercial Ready program is certainly not going to help realise that objective. Also gone is the development of an insulin nebuliser, which would have meant that diabetics, instead of having to have injections, could have had their insulin by inhaler. That would have been much easier and kinder for children in particular.