We are inside the last few days of a five-week federal election campaign and there’s been nary a mention of one of the country’s highest priority sectors – medical science.
Yes, health, Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme have featured prominently, but not the sector that creates, develops and commercialises the medical products that improve our health and wellbeing.
Life sciences is a priority because it supports more than 80,000 Australian jobs, contributes more than $8 billion in Gross Value Added, growing at 6.3 per cent each year since 2016 and has rich potential for much more.
As the current Labor government’s own plan says, by backing medical science “we can access essential medical goods that support our wellbeing and prosperity, while creating a thriving and self-sustaining industry with global reach.”
Of course, there’s only so much money in the kitty but as a sector recognised as a priority by both the major parties, it is disappointing to be overlooked through the campaign.
Disappointing for patients who could be cared for with more home-grown medical products, and disappointing for workers who could be employed to develop and manufacture these products.
We could do with some economic diversification and a greater emphasis on knowledge intensive sectors. After all, tariff turmoil and the prospects of a slowdown in growth in China will have implications for our resources exports and we’ll need ‘smart’ sectors – like life sciences – to step-up and fill the prosperity void.
With our reliance on resources (iron ore, coal and gas account for around 60 per cent of our total exports), we place 99th in the world on the economic complexity index. Sure, our resources companies are themselves highly innovative but battling it out with Burkina Faso and Botswana – both ahead of Australia – is not where we need to be.
Strategies for backing life sciences startups and SMEs through the difficult early years of innovation are critical and happily there are some bipartisan policy threads to work with.
The Coalition’s Modern Manufacturing Initiative morphed into the National Reconstruction Fund (the latter incorporating leftover funds from the former) which retains many of the same priority areas including life sciences.
The Entrepreneurs’ Programme, announced in the 2014-15 Federal Budget, has been cleaned up and is now the $400 million Industry Growth Program (disclosure: MTPConnect provides Industry Partner Organisation services under the IGP).
The $20 billion Medical Research Future Fund endowment, established under the Coalition, continues to play a critical role in supporting translation and commercialisation, including through MTPConnect-operated initiatives.
The future growth of life sciences in Australia is dependent on the skills and capacity of its workforce, and we’re behind the eight ball.
The sector faces ongoing challenges in developing, attracting and retaining world-class talent, particularly people with experience in research translation, clinical applications, good manufacturing practice (GMP) for advanced manufacturing and commercialisation.
While government and industry have invested more than $5 billion in new and upgraded facilities for complex therapeutics manufacture in Australia (think mRNA, cell and gene therapies), we have failed to develop the specialised skilled workforce needed to realise the benefits of those investments.
MTPConnect’s analysis shows that the size of this skilled workforce at the end of 2024 was 1,389 and that by the end of 2027, an additional 1,490 people will be required.
We need to more than double the workforce in three years, and yet there is currently no national complex therapeutics manufacturing skills framework and training plan in place.
Commercially focused innovation policies and bipartisan commitments to help us meet challenges like these would be most welcome.
They’ll help Australia capture more value from our world-leading medical research and address the tendency for Australian life science innovations to leave our shores too quickly, only to enrich the economies of other countries.
The example of the cancer drug Momelotinib is a case in point. Discovered in Melbourne in the early 2000s, struggles for development funding saw the patent sold to a Canadian company in 2009 for $14 million.
It was on-sold three years later for $510 million and eventually acquired by the global pharmaceutical company GSK for $3 billion.
The drug is now approved for use in the US, Europe, Korea and, as of December last year, Australia, with projected annual sales that are “comfortably above blockbuster status”.
The brilliant science and hard work was done here for others to reap the rewards; no manufacturing jobs, no ongoing royalties.
As Momelotinib shows, Australia punches above its weight in life science discoveries. We have the researchers, entrepreneurs, SMEs, clinicians and innovators ready and willing to turn discoveries into life saving medicines and devices.
While it’s the eleventh-hour of the election campaign, if we can find ways to harness this potential, develop the translational mindset and support our founders, we’ll go a long way ensuring tomorrow’s Momelotinib is not only Australian invented, but truly made in Australia.
Stuart Dignam is CEO of not-for-profit innovation accelerator MTPConnect
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