Pleasingly, a total of $652 million of long-awaited funding for medical research was last week allocated with the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) announcing the outcomes of key grants.
This comes as a welcome surprise after a few, relatively low key, reports last month revealed that the Australian government had frozen payouts of a broad range of research and commercialisation grants to review government spending. The unannounced freeze appears to have commenced on 30 August 2012, with the affected programs including those operated by the Australian Research Council (ARC), the NHMRC, Commercialisation Australia and the Clean Technology Investment Program.
Clearly, if support for the NHMRC had diminished, Australia would be at risk of losing many excellent innovative scientists and younger doctors, thereby missing out on the financial and health care benefits they bring by developing new innovative medicines and caring for patients.
Although this is a promising start, it is evident that the grants system needs more certainty overall, such as longer term grants for the very best Australian scientists, because it is the consistent support of research that leads to important cutting edge discoveries that improve the diagnosis, treatment and cure of illnesses that touch all Australians.
Thus, to keep Australia in good economic shape once the mining boom is over, it is essential that the government provides long term support for innovation in scientific research, engineering and innovation. Failure to do so will increase the “brain-drain” and jeopardise Australia’s future health, wellbeing and economic security.