2024–25 Pre-Budget Submission

This pre-Budget submission to the Australian Government ahead of the May 2024 Budget frames health and medical research as a driver of national productivity, linking it to the forces identified in the Treasurer’s November 2023 Statement of Expectations to the Productivity Commission. Research Australia maintains that the main barrier is the scale of investment: Australia’s gross expenditure on research and development (R&D) was 1.68% of GDP in 2021–22 against an OECD average of 2.718%, Australian Government R&D spending has fallen from 0.67% of GDP in 2011–12 to a forecast 0.49% in 2022–23, and business R&D fell to 0.9% of GDP. It recommends lifting Government R&D spending to at least 0.75% of GDP; increasing funding for discovery science through the National Health and Medical Research Council and Australian Research Council, indirect costs and infrastructure, guided by the Universities Accord; raising Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) grants from the planned $650 million a year towards the $973 million approved by the Future Fund Board of Guardians, and amending the MRFF Act as proposed in 2021; committing at least a further $100 million a year to the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy; creating an Australian equivalent of the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to use government procurement to support domestic medical products, with point-of-care diagnostics for remote communities as an example; giving the Australian Centre for Disease Control a role in aligning research with unmet health needs; a research workforce plan; better innovation metrics and restored Australian Bureau of Statistics funding; and a National Health and Medical Research Strategy.