Industry Assistance in Queensland: Response to the Draft Report of the Queensland Competition Authority

This submission responds to the Queensland Competition Authority’s draft report on industry assistance in Queensland, with a focus on the commercial translation of publicly funded health and medical research. Research Australia agrees with the Authority that market failure is a sound rationale for intervention and identifies two such failures: weak engagement between universities and business, with Australia ranking 29th and 30th of 30 OECD countries for large firms and small to medium enterprises collaborating with public research institutions, and a shortage of capital for start-ups commercialising research, as noted by the Financial System Inquiry. It cites the Medical Research Commercialisation Fund, the $200 million sale of Spinifex to Novartis and the University of Queensland Emory Drug Discovery Initiative as examples of effective public and private co-investment between scientific and commercial proof of concept, and maintains that Queensland should do more to support commercialisation. The submission contends that the Authority has misclassified programs whose intent is not to assist industry, including the Taxi Subsidy Scheme, the Health and Medical Research Fellowship Program, the Medical Research Grants Program and the Accelerate Program. It estimates that about $170 million of the $285.8 million identified as research and development assistance between 2013–14 and 2017–18 is wrongly categorised, overstating that category by at least 60%, and asks that health system efficiency and improved wellbeing be recognised as legitimate objectives of assistance.