Government announces $1 billion annual grant target by 2030 to boost cancer and epilepsy research
Child cancer and epilepsy research will be prioritized in a long-awaited release from the nation’s unspent medical research funding as the government moves to fix a chronic investment gap in research in Australia.
But the promised annual grant of $1 billion from the Medical Research Future Fund will not be fully delivered to researchers for another four years, even if another half billion dollars is transferred to the $25.4 billion fund.
This imprint revealed in January that more than nine in 10 researchers will be rejected from government-funded innovation grants in 2025, with research funding resting on billions of unspent money. As more applicants competed for the same $650 million pool each year and approvals dropped in successive years, nearly half of the researchers with top-scoring applications were missing out.
The medical research fund, set up by the former Coalition government, was planned to distribute around $1 billion a year when it reached its $20 billion maturity date in 2020.
Crossbench MPs, scientific bodies and medical associations are lobbying the government to release more money to continue Australia’s research success on the global stage, boost productivity and provide greater job security for researchers.
The funding boost comes after former top bureaucrat and head of the National Health and Medical Research Strategy Rosemary Huxtable warned further action was needed to address “critical issues around sustainability, legacy infrastructure and workforce risks” in the sector.
The government’s budget commitment of $508.5 million over four years means research grant funding will reach a record $1 billion in annual investment by the 2030-2031 financial year.
Health Minister Mark Butler on Thursday heralded the move as a transformation in health and medical research.
“Our investments will support our health and medical research sector by making funding more stable, improving job security and promoting a world-class research culture,” he said in a statement.
Nearly half of the extra funding in the budget will establish the Australian Cancer Research Program to coordinate work on cancers that have low survival rates and affect children and young people; The Precision Health Research Program will marshal grants to improve genomic healthcare and genetic testing.
The Australian Epilepsy Project, which creates a national standard of care for the condition, will receive $30 million, and the Australian Center for Accelerating Diabetes Innovation will receive $14.6 million as the first beneficiary.
The inflated value of the fund means spending could rise by up to $1.4 billion a year over the next 10 years without damaging the fund’s base, according to Parliamentary Budget Office costs commissioned by independent MP Monique Ryan last year.
Ryan said Thursday he was pleased to see an increase in spending after years of campaigning but called for an explanation as to why the promised $1 billion was not immediately released.
“The reality is that the secretary of health could release those funds tomorrow,” Ryan said. “[The funds] “Yet additional money continues to accumulate in this account.”
He said institutions and researchers remain at risk while larger funding is delayed.
“We’ve heard that one in five medical research institutes in Australia are at risk of going out of business in the next five years. So the concern is we could lose even more between now and 2030.”
Alongside the funding announcement, the government also published the launch of the 10-year National Health and Medical Research Strategy, prepared by former exchequer secretary Rosemary Huxtable.
“The strong and consistent view from industry is that action is needed now if Australia is to maintain its position as a global leader in health and medical research and, as a nation, to use research and innovation to deliver greater prosperity, health equity, economic growth and a sustainable health system,” Huxtable said in a letter to the minister as he tabled the strategy in March.
The strategy is designed to guide long-term government investment in health research.
“Achieving this goal will require additional funding and targeted use of existing funding,” Huxtable said.
Strategy recommendations include greater investment in high-risk, high-reward funding streams, rural and regional research, and Indigenous-led research.
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Brittany Busch is the federal politics correspondent for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.
