The former head of the nation's premier health research body has warned vested interests are "circling like sharks" around the Abbott government's promised Medical Research Future Fund.
Warwick Anderson, whose appointment as chief executive of the National Health and Medical Research Council ended last month, made the comments in an address to the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday.
Professor Anderson said the fund had the potential to "distort" the national research effort, and the research community needed to be "vigilant" to ensure the Abbott government kept its promise that decisions about disbursements from the fund would be made by the NHMRC.
"I can tell you that vested interests are already circling like sharks," Professor Anderson said.
"I think the researchers out there and in the audience today have to keep an eye on this so the public benefit from this big investment, and the public will benefit best if the public disbursement is peer reviewed," he said.
"The then Minister for Health Peter Dutton told the council of the NHMRC that his inbox was filled with great ideas about how to spend the Medical Research Future Fund within about 30 seconds of it being announced."
"So I can completely understand how the politicians get lobbied for good causes, but every time you spend a dollar on X you don't spend it on Y and I suppose my main point is only other peers can decide whether Y is a better use of taxpayers' money than X."
The Medical Research Future Fund was arguably the centrepiece of the Abbott Government's first budget last May. Savings from the health portfolio, including cuts to Medicare rebates, increased charges for prescriptions, and cuts to public hospital funding, were to be diverted into the fund until it reached a balance of $20 billion. Earnings from the fund, which the government said would reach $1 billion a year by 2020, would be spent on medical research.
While Health Minister Sussan Ley says the government remains committed to the fund, many of the savings which were to fund it have not been implemented, and the government is yet to introduce legislation to establish the fund.
