Draft National Health and Medical Research Strategy 2026–2036: Research Australia Submission

This submission responds to the draft National Health and Medical Research Strategy 2026–2036, drawing on Research Australia’s member surveys, workshops and roundtables. While supporting the Strategy as the first national approach to the sector, it maintains that the draft reads more like a green paper than a strategy ready for implementation, lacking firm commitments, timeframes, a formal approval process and a governance and accountability framework spanning portfolios and jurisdictions. It recommends renaming it the National Health and Medical Research and Innovation Strategy, adding a goal to ‘embed research as routine care’, an independently led monitoring and evaluation framework, a landscape scan of the whole ecosystem and clear ownership of priority setting. Other recommendations include unified management of the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) and the NHMRC Medical Research Endowment Account under ‘Model 2’, recognition of methods beyond clinical trials, attention to priority populations beyond First Nations and regional, rural and remote communities, a measurable path to research and development (R&D) spending of 3% of gross domestic product (GDP), an Australian equivalent of the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), university intellectual property reform, an Australian Spinouts Register and a stronger prevention focus with 5% of health expenditure on prevention by 2030. On enablers, it recommends action on researcher job insecurity and data on the research workforce, co-funding with States and Territories using unallocated MRFF reserves, more support for discovery science, and at least a further $100 million a year for the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) before its funding arrangements expire in 2028–29.