Australian Technology Network | 19 May 2014
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ATN executive director Vicki Thomson says it would be “exceedingly churlish” to denigrate 
the federal government’s $20 billion medical research fund announced in the 2014-15 federal budget. But she goes on to point out, in a non-churlish way, that the scheme has serious flaws and can seriously distort the operation of the national research system, which is overwhelming based in Australia’s universities.
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Wellcome Images/The Conversation
There is not much which is dearer to the heart than excellence in medical research.
So this complaint is not about that decision; rather, it is about the poor policy structure behind it, which has clearly given no consideration to how the fund fits within the boundaries of Australian research. And particularly how it impacts universities, where some 60 per cent of Australian research takes place.
As a result, groups such as mine, the Australian Technology Network of Universities (ATN), find ourselves in the unfortunate position of sounding negative when we are totally positive about the fund. We are just not at all positive about the profound difficulties it is likely to deliver for the university sector.
The targeting of this funding to medical research will be profoundly disruptive to a university research system that is – like Cuba Gooding Jr in the film Jerry Maguire – notoriously sensitive to funding incentives.
It would have been nice if government had thought to ask the sector how best the fund could be achieved and, importantly, positioned – and also considered the ramifications of its introduction – rather than springing it on everyone as a eureka moment.
It is a massive fund – understood to be the largest such fund in the world. So large that the predicted $20 billion by 2020, based on capital growth over that time, is more than double the government’s $9 billion entire annual investment in all Australian research. It is more than our annual exports in natural gas, wheat or gold. It is more than the $15 billion received in 2013 from the export of international education – Australia’s fourth largest export sector. The fund will be secured by the new charges on Australians’ visits to GPs and the increased charges for PBS prescriptions.
So why our angst? Firstly, the fund is highly likely to change the total Australian research landscape, and in ways that are counterproductive to the national good. Research priorities of agriculture, food security, oil and gas, all so critical to our future, could be sidelined in the chase for a slice of this massive new fund. That goes against everything the government has stated since it was elected. It has assured us it is determined to put Australia on a sustainable growth path. Such a single research focus does anything but.
Concentrating efforts on medical research alone is definitely not the way to realise such a goal.
Lack of strategy
In his response to the budget, Australia’s chief scientist, Ian Chubb, welcomed the investment in medical research. But he added: “Hopefully it signals that Australian research across the full spectrum will achieve the recognition that it deserves as we seek to build the platform we need to sustain growth.”
A giant, concentrated investment in health does not constitute a research strategy and nor does it put Australia on the sustainable growth path envisioned by Chubb and others.
It needs to be remembered that nations have economic and social health as well as medical health. And there is more to medical health than just medical research. Put crudely, picking winners in the research area will come back to bite both politically and economically.
If any government when in opposition harped on about “plan the work and work the plan”, it was this one. But this new fund, this budget, gave us anything but a research plan or strategy. A massive medical fund is not Australian research ticked off as a job well done.
Support for a national research strategy, and a holistic approach by government to supporting a broad spectrum of research, will go a long way to ensuring a productive, economically sound Australia.
This article was published in the Australian Financial Review 19 May 2014.