Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

The government has thought very deeply about how best to ensure appropriate integrity in decision-making, appropriate independence and appropriate governance and transparency in relation to the disbursement of these funds into appropriate medical research priorities. We certainly have very carefully considered the arguments that have been put forward by various stakeholders in the context of the community affairs committee inquiry by the Greens and also those that have been put forward by the Labor Party. But, with all due respect, on reflection we do no not believe that what Labor is proposing is workable, and we do not believe that what Labor is proposing would help us to close the gap in the medical research funding arrangements that currently exist in Australia.

Let me explain. We have gone out of our way to ensure that we have a very strong, very robust, very independent and highly qualified Medical Research Future Fund advisory board arrangement. That advisory board has been tasked with the responsibility of setting the priorities and the strategy, and the government certainly has to comply with the priorities and the strategy as determined by the advisory board. To take that further step that Senator McLucas has just mentioned—making any of the advisory board recommendations binding on the Minister for Health in relation to specific funding decisions—would effectively mean that the advisory board becomes the funding body. The starting principle in designing the board is that they are to be separated from specific grant decisions to avoid conflicts of interest. The best talent and the best experience is required for the board, and this inevitably means that there will be conflicts. It is not tenable to have people deciding what money goes to themselves. The priorities and strategy—and the way that is determined by the advisory board—have to have the highest level of integrity. If there is no question of conflict, the National Health and Medical Research Council and other bodies have the skills and systems for ground-level disbursements, and that is what we propose to continue into the future.

We believe that the process the government has put forward is a robust process. It is a process that provides for the appropriate levels of independence but also ensures that this is a workable, more efficient system that is successful in filling the gaps that are currently in place across Australia when it comes to medical research. As Senator Di Natale very rightly pointed out in his contribution earlier, the government of the day, whether that is us or whether it is a future government, has to have the flexibility from time to time to respond to urgent requirements. To put a very burdensome administrative process in place as is proposed by the Labor opposition would not help to facilitate that.