Australia’s answer to the Trump ‘anti-science’ crusade is already in the bank

Australia has a long and much-celebrated reputation globally in health and medical research. Among a long list of achievements, we are the nation that has given the world a vaccine for cervical cancer, the bionic ear and spray-on skin.

Thousands of other discoveries, though sometimes less celebrated, have also fundamentally reshaped global health. They have led to new therapies, more effective drugs, improved clinical practices, and better public health behaviours. They have also contributed to Australians enjoying one of the highest life expectancies on the planet.

To continue to achieve these incredible breakthroughs, Australia’s medical research sector must have funding that is not driven by profit.

The Medical Research Future Fund announced by the Coalition government in 2014 was supposedly set up to do just that. The MRFF was to disburse $1 billion a year for medical research once it reached maturity at $20 billion. But that has not happened. Instead, its annual disbursements have been about $650 million and they are expected to stay at this level for the next decade.

Federal politics correspondent Natassia Chrysanthos reports that new costings show Australia could lift those disbursements to $1 billion, and the fund would still grow to $30 billion by 2034-35. If it kept the fund at its current level of $24 billion, the government could release as much as $1.4 billion annually, more than double the current amount.

The release of the costings, commissioned by independent MP Monique Ryan, could not come at a more pertinent time as the Trump administration hollows out its health and medical research institutions and makes multi-billion-dollar science cuts.

Australian medical research institutes relying on US funding have already been forced to suspend projects on malaria, tuberculosis and women’s health, as well as lay off staff. Burnet Institute director Professor Brendan Crabb has likened the cuts to “having a bomb thrown into the middle of science”.

Many Australian researchers, like their counterparts in scientific and medical organisations worldwide, find themselves at the mercy of a Trump administration that Australia’s former chief medical officer, Professor Paul Kelly, warns is embarking on an “anti-science, anti-expert crusade”.

Despite this, and with domestic cost increases also creating pressures, the government won’t commit to increasing disbursements from the MRFF. A health department spokesperson said that it was finalising a 10-year national strategy for health and medical research to be delivered by the end of the year.

Public and stakeholder consultation on the draft strategy is already under way, but to many in the sector, the ready-made answer is the MRFF. “We have what we need already in the bank,” Crabb said.

While ridiculed in some quarters at its inception, and not without its critics over the past decade, the $20 billion MRFF now looks like good foresight. Established at a time when the Australian science sector was being pushed ever closer to crisis as funding fell, it now faces a new set of challenges. The government must ensure that billions of dollars sitting in the fund reach those it was intended for – the Australians who can deliver world-leading health innovations.

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