Health research funding faces serious cuts in the forthcoming Budget, according to sources within the science community, but Innovation Minister Kim Carr has defeated an attempt to slash scientific research funding in his portfolio.
Last week, news broke of a looming $400m cut in the budget of the National Health and Medical Research Council. The ABC’s Health Report covered it on Monday, including an interview with the head of the Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes. On Tuesday, an email circulated within the Walter and Eliza Hill Institute of Medical Research about the cuts, saying they were “confirmed”, and predicting protest action. Yesterday, Mental Health and Ageing Minister Mark Butler tweeted “Am reading everyone’s comments about medical research, but can’t speculate on the budget which is still some weeks away.”
The NHMRC, which is responsible for investing in Australian medical and health research, disburses over $700m a year in research funding via its Medical Research Endowment. Over four years, a $400m cut would be about 13% of the research budget.
According to sources within the research sector, the Department of Health and Ageing faces a tough budget because it has previously escaped major cuts under Labor, and medical research is a particular target given its lack of impact on frontline services. Non-research areas of Health have done very well from Labor, with significant increases in hospitals and training funding being key Labor claims against Tony Abbott’s allegedly poor funding record as Health minister. Tough negotiations to cut pathology costs, and the deferral of new PBS listings, have already received media attention. There has also been speculation of changes to MBS items.
However, Kim Carr is said to have successfully fought off attempt to slash research funding in his Innovation portfolio. The Australian Research Council disburses over $700m in research funding a year and the Department of Innovation oversees nearly $1.5b in higher education research grants. The portfolio also includes the CSIRO, where staff have recently undertaken industrial action as part of a pay dispute with the agency. Carr is said to have argued that his portfolio has borne the brunt of recent spending cuts — the Green Car Innovation Fund, a key part of the Rudd Government’s manufacturing policy, has been dramatically slashed, and the notorious cash-for-clunkers scheme ditched.
The rumoured $400m NHMRC cut, however, may be a classic example of pre-Budget softening up, so a significantly smaller cut unveiled on Budget night draws sighs of relief rather than condemnation. But the impact of even a smaller cut will, according to Bob Williamson, Secretary for Science Policy at the Australian Academy of Science, be long-lasting.
“Research can’t be turned on or off like a tap,” he told Crikey. “A cut of $400m would see us lose about 500 people overseas and have impacts for many years to come. And it would send a signal that a country like ours that is well-off and which has been able to avoid the effects of the Global Financial Crisis will not invest in health research.”
Williamson noted that the results from last year’s Excellence in Research for Australia, an evaluation of research undertaken between 2003-08, suggest that fields with consistent funding levels saw much better performance than those with fluctuating levels.
The Government also axed two successful school-age science education programs, Primary Connections and Science by Doing. Williamson believes the axeing of programs like those will have consequences for decades.
“In 10, 20 or 30 years’ time, when the minerals run out, we’ll need a country that is scientifically and technically literate and if we don’t educate our kids in science we simply won’t have one.”
“CSIRO, where staff have recently undertaken industrial action as part of a pay dispute with the agency”
1. the industrial action is ongoing. There have been small signs of movement from management, but nowhere near enough yet. (I can provide more details on demand 😉 )
2. the dispute is about much more than pay. A key issue is an attempt by management to further dilute an already woeful ‘consultation’ clause in the enterprise agreement. The recalcitrance of management on this issue is particularly silly: surely you would want to enrol some of the best brains in the country in solving problems, rather than ignoring an alienating them.
I have to point out, again, that there’s a fundamental misunderstanding here. The ARC, the NHMRC and others got substantial increases in funding in the previous government’s Backing Australia’s Ability package. All the additional funding was scheduled to end this year and lo! it is. Anyone who was paying attention would have known this and would have started lobbying to maintain the higher level of funding – maybe even increase it – eighteen months ago, when the current government was positively scouring the land looking for things to spend money on. The present complaints seem to be part of a disturbing trend in the science and research community to assume that all funding – even funding which was announced with a definite end-point – as perpetual …
Migraine is right. One might add that Howard gave big increases in funding for medical research, particularly at medical research institutes which were not parts of universities, presumably cos medical research and in particular the institutes didn’t get caught up in Howard’s cultural wars.
@MIGRAINE – so what is your point? That funding should always be cut from research, unless researchers drop what they’re doing and spend their time lobbying government rather than doing the actual research? How about discussing whether or not it is a “good idea” to chop the research budget by 20% rather than whether it was possible to “see it coming”.
Even the UK, who have been cutting every single area of government funding, spared medical research.
New solutions to health problems don’t come out of nowhere. If we are really worried about funding healthcare in the future, with an ageing population and massive increases in dementia, cancer and drug-resistant infections in healthcare facilities… then we should investing in research to find better ways to deal with these problems rather than pulling more funding away from the research budget. This is just one example – rising rates of asthma & allergy among Australian kids (higher than in the rest of the world) is one at the other end of the demographic spectrum. If we want to find solutions, we need to fund research.
I understand Migraine to be making 2 points:
1 what is being contemplated is not a cut to standard funding for health research, but the ending of special additional funding that was budgeted for only 4 years and renewed for 4 years in BAA II; and
2 if advocates wanted the Backing Australia’s Ability program to continue beyond its fixed lifetime they would have been more effective had they (a) thought ahead, and (b) in particular, proposed that the program be extended 18 months ago when the Australian government was looking for worthwhile but quick ways of inflating the economy.
It is true that time spent lobbying for additional funds is taken from the bench and other directly productive activities, but that is a price of democracy which even medical researchers should bear. I wouldn’t cite the current UK Government’s disarray in education and research policy and funding as an example to follow.