Australia’s chief scientist Ian Chubb has revealed he was not consulted over the Federal Government’s planned $20 billion medical research fund.
The fund is one of the Government’s key budget highlights and will be paid for through proposed GP co-payments.
It has attracted criticism from the science community, which claims its research scope is too narrow.
Professor Chubb told Lateline he would have liked to have some input into the fund’s establishment and that he is not sure where the Government sought advice.
“I presume it talked to people within the research sector and perhaps outside the research sector with an interest in the outcomes of medical research,” he said. “But I didn’t talk to them.”
He said it is important that the fund does not focus too much on backing research grants at the expense of large-scale improvements in Australian science.
“We need to be able to fund clinical trials on a scale; we need to translate the results of medical research into patient care. We’ve not been terribly good at that,” he said.
“We’re getting better at it. We start from a pretty low base and this might well be an opportunity to do things in areas and on a scale that we haven’t been able to do before. And if we can do that, then it’ll be good.”
He said that while he regrets funding cuts to the CSIRO, the Australian Research Council and other scientific organisations in the most recent budget, it is an opportunity to look more strategically at scientific investment.
“I think that what those actions do is give us the opportunity to come back with a decent strategy, a decent plan, a decent forward-looking plan for some strategic reinvestment,” he said.
“Whilst I do of course express my disappointment at the cuts, at the same time, that’s happened, and now we have to look forward and say, ‘well, how are we going to reverse some of that? How are we going to make sure we do the right things to provide Australia with the future we want for it?'”
Short-term policies hampering science in Australia: Chubb
Professor Chubb said that while Australia had talented scientists and good opportunities to contribute to global knowledge, it did not seem to regard this as a priority.
He said this comes to down “short-sighted” policy decisions over the past few decades.
“Over the years, really – and I’m not just focusing on the very last budget – but over the years, we’ve had short-term policies, we’ve had stop-start policies, we’ve had trimmings here and cuts there and all of those sorts of things over a couple of decades at least.
“So, I don’t think we’d do that if we Australians were prepared to stand up and say: ‘This is too important to our future to let that happen to it.'”
Professor Chubb also said a “whole-of-government” approach was needed to combat the fact that Australia is one of three countries in the OECD without a plan on science, technology, engineering and maths.
“I think the issue for us in Australia is that science impinges on 14 portfolios. Some are big, of course, some are smaller. But decisions taken in one can have an impact on many or all of the others.
“And without that sort of whole-of-government approach – are we doing enough of this? Are we doing the right amount of that? Are we doing the right things? – all of those sorts of questions – then we risk losing important disciplines or important areas of research simply because each agency will act independently when it has to set its own priorities or adjust its budgets or whatever it’s doing.”