News from Research Australia.
The Treasurer’s commitment to achieving a budget surplus in the next financial year has led to significant cuts to Commonwealth spending, but funding for health and medical research has been spared.
This is an encouraging result for a sector which last year had to argue hard for the value of its work and pushed back successfully against proposed cuts in the 2011/12 budget. This year the Government played its cards closer to its chest in the lead up to the budget; there was plenty of speculation but no details about cuts to health and medical research. Nonetheless, the message of the 2011 campaign over funding for health and medical research appear to have been remembered.
Expenditure from the NHMRC Medical Research Endowment Account (funding for grants) is estimated at $835 million for 2012/13, a $30 million increase over the estimated expenditure for 2011/12. This figure is projected to increase to $858 million in 2012/13 and plateau in the subsequent two years.
Similarly the funding to the ARC discovery programs has been maintained, although the budget statement projects a small decline in funding from the 2014/15 year due to the winding-down of the Future Fellowships scheme and the Super Science Fellowships scheme.
This is further supported by increases in block funding to universities that will further enhance their capacity to undertake scientific research.
Funding for Cancer Australia is largely unchanged, as is the funding for the Australian National Health Preventive Agency.
There had been speculation that the Government would cut the health insurance rebate for alternative therapies. The Government has announced that the Chief Medical Officer will undertake a review of a review of alternative therapies, to examine the evidence of clinical efficacy, cost effectiveness and their safety and quality.
Following the completion of the review, the Government will introduce through regulation a list of natural therapies that will continue to receive the private health insurance rebate. Natural therapy treatments not included on this list will no longer be eligible for the rebate.
The Government has increased the cost to students of undertaking science, statistics and mathematics courses at tertiary institutions, effectively removing the priority status previously assigned to these subjects. At the same time, in response to the Chief Scientist, Professor Chubb’s, report Mathematics, Engineering and Science in the National Interest, the Government will spend $54 million over four years on a range of programs to increase student participation rates in maths and science subjects in secondary schools.
For futher information: http://www.researchaustralia.org/
Print This Post