Social Impact Investing: Response to the Consultation

This submission responds to the Australian Government’s discussion paper on growing the Australian social impact investing market, addressing the consultation questions on promising policy areas (Question 7), collaboration with state and territory governments (Question 8) and the four proposed principles for social impact investing (Question 11). Research Australia maintains that measures improving health should be explicitly recognised as social outcomes within the framework, and that social impact investing could fill a funding gap for pilot projects and clinical trials that implement and evaluate evidence-based interventions which cannot be commercialised, such as new treatment protocols, new uses of generic drugs and public health programs. Because such interventions can produce measurable savings through shorter hospital stays, fewer readmissions and earlier diagnosis, they suit outcomes-based investment. As a worked example, it proposes a pilot of targeted promotion to raise participation in bowel cancer screening among groups identified by South Australian research as under-screened, noting that more than 14,000 Australians are diagnosed with bowel cancer each year. It points to governments funding 67% of Australia’s $161.6 billion annual health expenditure, and to New South Wales initiatives, as grounds for joint national pilots across jurisdictions. It broadly supports the four principles of value for money, robust outcomes measurement, fair sharing of risk and return, and deliverable social outcomes, and maps a typical health intervention against each.