Budget delays Medical Research Future Fund, slashes funding by $10 million

THE $20 billion research fund set up to sweeten last year’s Budget and possibly help find a cure for cancer has been delayed and slashed by $10 million.

Research

MEDICAL researchers will have their funding slashed by $10 million next financial year as the government’s Medical Research Future Fund is delayed and has its initial funding pool reduced.

Treasurer Joe Hockey set up the $20 billion fund in last year’s budget to help sell his unpopular $5 GP fee and hoped it would find a cure for cancer.

It was meant to be the repository for billions of dollars in cuts made to public hospitals, Medicare and subsidised medicines.

The government pocketed more than $2 billion of those health savings in the last 12 months but it did not set up the MRFF or deposit any health savings into the fund, which was meant to commence on January 1.

Research

Last year’s budget promised to distribute $20 million in earnings from the fund to medical research in 2015-16 but that spending was halved to just $10 million in last night’s budget.

Mr Hockey now promises to set up the fund in August 2015 and the budget papers show the amount of money in the fund in 2015-16 will be just $3.48 billion, more than $1.3 billion less than forecast in last year’s budget.

The size of the fund has been affected by the government’s decision to abandon $650 million a year in savings from its dumped $5 GP fee.

However, Mr Hockey says the fund is still expected to reach $20 billion in 2019-20.

Only the earnings off this capital investment will be spent on medical research.

Originally published as Budget delays Medical Research Future Fund, slashes funding by $10 million