Medical research institutes hit with multimillion funding cuts in Victoria state budget 2024

Victoria’s most respected scientists are warning the state’s world-leading medical research institutes could go broke and lifesaving breakthroughs missed after their funding was slashed in the budget.

Top scientists warn world-leading medical research institutes could go broke in Victoria and lifesaving breakthroughs will be threatened after multimillion-dollar cuts in the state budget.

Leading cancer researcher Professor Grant McArthur said rising cancer diagnoses meant now was “not the time” to slash funds, while the peak body for medical research institutes warned the government had missed an opportunity to fund discoveries for “lifesaving” treatments.

Treasurer Tim Pallas’s budget on Tuesday revealed medical research funding was being cut to $57.3m in 2024-25, down for the second year in a row.

The government had invested $68m in the 2023-24 financial year, and $108.1m the year prior.

The $50m drop is a massive loss for the research sector, but would cover just two days worth of interest fees on the government’s staggering debt.

The Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne.

The budget papers blamed the drop “primarily” on the end of a major genomics project, and a government spokeswoman defended its investment in cancer care and research.

But Professor Ricky Johnstone, the Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes Victorian chairman, called for reform, saying the drop was “really going to affect our ability to conduct medical research at the highest international level”.

“The public health campaigns and the generation of vaccines to the Covid virus, that was all based on fundamental science and translational research,” he said.

“If we start cutting funding for those sorts of programs and support mechanisms for those programs, then the threat is that those breakthroughs won’t be available.”

State funding was crucial to paying for the “unmet costs” of research, because national grants did not cover a project’s actual expenses, he said.

“In the long-term, the full cost of research really has to be met if we’re going to have a vibrant medical research sector in Victoria,” he said.

The association had called for a $20m annual boost in the budget lead-up, warning most of Victoria’s independent research institutes had recently “reported significant financial deficits” and interstate governments had better arrangements than Victoria.

“We understand that scheme is undergoing review,” he said. “But in future budgets, that’s the sort of thing that really must happen, otherwise we’re going to be going broke within the sector.”

Professor Grant McArthur said the cut is concerning. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

Professor Johnstone, also Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre’s executive cancer research director, said one slashed program included a $900,000 grant scheme, whose recipients went on to bring $40.8m into the state.

Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre Alliance chief executive Professor McArthur said the “very substantial reduction” was both “concerning and disappointing”.

Cancer in Victoria alone was set to skyrocket from 35,000 new diagnoses a year to 50,000 by 2033, he said.

“We need to keep the foot on the pedal,” he said.

“There are very significant predictions for the rising burden of disease in an ageing population that we need to keep up with and we need to do innovative research.”

He added that it was ironic that the alliance — given $7.5 million over four years, compared to the more than $30 million promised for the same length of time in 2020-2021 — was receiving less funding, when other states were looking to replicate their model.

“This is definitely a challenge to keep having the impact on reducing the burden of cancer given the reduced funding,” he said.

A government spokeswoman said: “The Labor government’s investments in cancer care and research have delivered dramatic improvements in cancer outcomes – with the five-year survival rate for Victorians diagnosed with cancer increasing from 59 per cent in 2017 to 71 per cent in 2021.”

Originally published as Medical research institutes hit with multimillion funding cuts in Victoria state budget 2024