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It’s an absolute thrill to be here with the leaders of the medical research sector here in Australia and because you are the leaders of the medical research sector here in Australia, you are amongst the leaders of medical research globally.
So, my duty – and it’s a very happy duty – is to say congratulations to all of you on behalf of our nation and, if I may be presumptuous, to say on behalf of people everywhere thank you for everything that you do for our country and for our world.
We are world champions when it comes to medical research. We’re not the only world champions, and it would be fair to say that we don’t win gold medals every year, but there are very few years when we are not amongst the top performers and, consistently, Australia does much better than we should on a per capita basis as a home and as a source of medical research.
We have less than one per cent of the world’s population, but we’re responsible for close to five per cent of refereed medical research. Eight of our fifteen Nobel Prize winners have been in the field of medical research. Four of the last ten Australians of the Year have been medical researchers and I’m delighted we’ve got two of them here tonight – Pat McGorry and Ian Frazer – and of course Simon McKeon is not a medical researcher himself, but he’s had a lot to do with encouraging medical research over the years.
Howard Florey was probably the man who has saved more lives than any other person in history – an Australian medical researcher.
Donald Metcalf, the father of modern haematology, is estimated to have saved some 20 million lives.
Australians invented the bionic ear, the cervical cancer vaccine, the first treatment for influenza.
So, wherever you look in the field of research, in the field of treatments and cures, Australians are there making a difference and may that always be the case.
I was looking before I came along this evening at some recent work which our medical research institutes have done. The Children’s Cancer Institute in New South Wales has doubled the survival rate from 35 per cent to 70 per cent for high-risk acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. What a marvellous way of helping humanity.
The Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute has recently developed a world first technique doubling the time a donor heart can exist outside the recipient.
The Hunter Medical Research Institute, a new clot busting drug therapy for stroke victims which has demonstrated major neurological improvement within 24 hours for two thirds of patients and 72 per cent have experienced excellent or good recovery after three months.
The Baker Institute, a world first breakthrough in the treatment of high blood pressure – a paradigm shift in fact – using catheters. This new procedure has been approved for use in Europe and here in Australia and is now being practiced in more than 10 of our hospitals.
Every day, every week, every month, every year our researchers are making a difference.
Brendan Crabb has already pointed out that thanks in large measure to medical research, someone born today can expect to live 25 years longer than his or her great-grandparents. That’s not just 25 years, that’s good years – good, healthy years – that we can expect which our great-grandparents couldn’t, largely because of the sustained work of medical researchers over the last hundred years or so.
Our life expectancy has gone from under 60 to over 80 in large measure because of the people in this room and your intellectual forebears over the last several decades.
So, that is my first job tonight: to say thank you to all of you for what you do for all of us.
I’m also here to talk about what the Government would like to do to make it easier for you in the future.
As some of you might know, when I was the Health Minister some years ago I regarded myself as the Health Minister for medical research and now I’d like to regard myself as the Prime Minister for medical research.
Pre-election we promised that we would make it easier for medical researchers through streamlining and simplifying NHMRC grant applications. My Department tells me that all this has been done. I’m always a little cautious when my Department tells me that all this has been done; I’d like to confirm with you that all this has been done! But, I am told that the application forms are very considerably shorter and I’m told that the percentage of five year grants has gone up from about six per cent to at least 20 per cent. So, that sounds to me like proof positive that at least some of our ambitions to make you researchers rather than form fillers are actually coming true.
Of course, post-election in the Budget we announced, really, a world first; a $20 billion Medical Research Future Fund that will more than double our annual spend on medical research.
This is precisely what the 23,000 or so medical researchers in our country need if they are to continue to do their world leading work.
So, I’m here to thank you, I’m here to tell you what the Government is hoping to do for you in the months and years ahead, but I also would like to put in a request.
To Brendan Crabb and to Andrew Cuthbertson, thank you so much for your words earlier tonight about the Medical Research Future Fund.
Governments propose, in some respects parliaments dispose, and you can’t have a Medical Research Future Fund without funding.
Yes, the funding mechanism is controversial; we are asking for a modest co-payment from people who are visiting their general practitioner. No one likes to pay more for anything, but it seems to me that if it’s fair and reasonable for people to make a modest contribution when they get their PBS drugs – the drugs that so many of you have made such a contribution towards – why isn’t it also fair and reasonable for this modest contribution when you visit the doctor, particularly when for quite a few years all of the proceeds are going to be invested in what will be a world changing fund, in what will help people’s lives, not just here, but right around the world?
This is history making, this is culture shifting, this is life changing.
So, my request to all of you in this room tonight: please don’t leave tomorrow without knocking on the door of a crossbench Senator and saying, “For our country’s sake – for our country’s sake, for the world’s sake – have a look at this fund”.
Thank you so much.
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