“There’s precedent for using the Medical Research Future Fund to supplement [research council] allocations. We have hundreds of millions of unspent dollars in the MRFF, while researchers are unable to secure their careers, cement their futures, and improve Australians’ health.
“Preparing a grant application takes months of work, but I understand that more than half the projects rated ‘outstanding’ in the most recent grant round were unsuccessful – they received no funding.
“What are we telling our researchers when we say their work is outstanding, but we don’t value it enough to support it?”
Professor Steve Wesselingh, the chief executive of the NHMRC, said the drop came from higher demand for grants, combined with applications for larger sums of money.
“That amount that we give out [$250 million per year] has essentially stayed static over time apart from some minor indexation,” he told Senate estimates last month, under questioning from independent senator David Pocock.
“But what we have seen is an increase in numbers of applications, and we have also seen an increase in the size of applications, so the amount of money that people are asking for in the grants has gone up significantly over the last few years, as has the number of applications.”
Wesselingh said the rejection rate for the “outstanding” applications did not necessarily mean the researchers never received funding, because they may have been successful in other processes.
But he acknowledged the sector wanted more money dispersed. “We are in the process right now with the department, chaired by Rosemary Huxtable, of developing a medical health and research strategy,” he said.
“As that strategy is developed… we should be looking at the strategic goals of health and medical research and the resources required to achieve those goals.
“It’s likely that you would see, within that strategy, that more resource given to health and medical research would increase innovation and increase health productivity in the country.”
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Pocock said it was important Australia retained world-class researchers who spent their time doing life-changing study, “rather than filling out endless forms or spending hours on grant applications that are ultimately unsuccessful despite being assessed as meritorious”.
He is pushing for the government to lift its annual disbursements from the medical fund alongside Ryan and independent MPs Helen Haines, Kate Chaney, Sophie Scamps, Allegra Spender and Zali Steggall.
It comes as the Trump administration hollows out US research and medical institutions, including the Centre for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health, which is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world.
