There can be no doubt that titanium-tough Health and NDIS Minister Mark Butler will not make savings when required – and usually devise a smart approach to selling them.
Have a look at what he has managed in medical research, where the lobbies long and loudly demanded $1bn a year from the Medical Research Future Fund, a $450m pa or so increase.
Their pals in the press and Parliament amplified the outrage, but the Government stayed schtum until the Budget, when it committed an extra $500m over four years, to take MRFF outlays to $1bn annually from 2030-31. The sweetener for the sector is it includes $128m for indirect costs of research – a long-standing demand from the medical (indeed every) research community, which complain grants are eroded to pay for infrastructure.
There was always going to be a second stage of containing complaining from medical researchers – it is Rosemary Huxtable’s just-released ten-year national health and medical research strategy.
Huxtable’s process was brilliant – in 12 months of consultation she invited the MR lobbies into the tent and also actually asked consumers, as in citizens, what they want. So is the report. Inevitably there is “more funding is needed” but there are a bunch of proposals on ways for the system to work better with however much it gets.
Deep in the document Ms Huxtable writes, “it is important to regularly assess whether funded research is delivering results as expected and whether the systems in place are effectively supporting the translation of research into real-world outcomes.”
She also includes the permanently prescribed statement of support for basic research, necessary to keep the research community onside. But Ms Huxtable also focuses on the system’s holistic health;
“We need to focus on building capability for research and translation into our diverse health settings. We need to create the structures, incentives and culture to embed research as a routine part of prevention, clinical care and policy development. We need to ensure access to infrastructure and facilities in healthcare settings to deliver better health outcomes for all and invest in collaborative platforms and networks focused on building capacity for clinical research and implementation science.”
First reviews for Huxtable are good. “The opportunity now is to move quickly into implementation so these reforms translate into stronger capability, greater sustainability and better outcomes for Australians,” says Saraid Billiards from the not-especially generous to governments Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes. AAMRI also is positive about $1bn a year from the MRFF, even if does not arrive until 2030.
For Mr Butler, both are big wins of the “good policy is good politics kind.”