Wednesday, 31 August 2022

Public Accounts and Estimates Committee

Report on the 2021–22 Budget Estimates

Mr McGUIRE (Broadmeadows) (10:20): I refer to the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee’s inquiry into the budget estimates for 2021–22 and the contribution from the Minister for Economic Development on how Victoria is trying to strengthen economic performance through a range of mechanisms. I want to continue my contribution on how we reach globally, lead nationally and deliver for Victoria.

The plan I am proposing is to establish AUKUS health. The aim is to deliver worldwide health breakthroughs in a time of global pandemic and accelerate opportunities from the Cancer Moonshot. Results can be driven by leveraging the relationship Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States of America have forged for defence and national security into health security. The AUKUS health strategy aims to harness collaboration founded through the Cancer Moonshot initiative to establish a brain gain between Australia, the UK and the US. My original proposal that Australia partner the US and the Cancer Moonshot brought Joe Biden to Melbourne in 2016 for the opening of the billion-dollar jewel in Australia’s medical research crown, the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre, Australia’s only comprehensive cancer centre, and internationalised this quest. Extending the Cancer Moonshot through AUKUS would be defining in the mission to crack the code of one of the world’s biggest killers.

The next step for Australia is to partner President Biden in his plan to translate the US model designed for national security, leading to discoveries including the internet and GPS under a defence department agency, to focus on health. This collaboration would target breakthroughs to prevent, detect and treat diseases including Alzheimer’s, diabetes and cancer under the National Institutes of Health. President Biden’s method is to adapt artificial intelligence and other technologies to supercharge breakthroughs predicted to outstrip half a century’s advances in the next decade.

Step 3 is to drive institutional clout to accelerate breakthroughs with our research institutes and universities. The UK has €2 billion it wants to invest in science, but the European Union has frozen it out of the world’s biggest research and development fund, the €95 billion Horizon Europe. I proposed expanding partnerships with Australia and creating new ones at the recent Australian British Health Catalyst, an idea greatly appreciated in London and being pursued. This initiative aligns with the Australia-UK free trade agreement that both countries have signed, which will soon be debated in Australia’s Parliament. I proposed to British government officials that the value of the free trade agreement be raised from the exchange of Vegemite and Marmite to life-saving vaccines in a time of pandemic. The direct importance plays out in Broadmeadows, where one of Australia’s leading companies, CSL, has been manufacturing more than 50 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines from Britain, saving lives at home and abroad. A $1.8 billion deal for new vaccines against influenza will establish a new lucrative export industry nearby soon. Melbourne, like Boston and London, is a world leader in medical research based around our major universities. These are the anchors for these ecosystems. Monash will be first to manufacture mRNA vaccines on campus with Moderna, and then step 4 is citizen science, forging partnerships between patients, medical researchers and governments, vital to tackle our biggest health challenges, killers and sources of insecurity.

Australia is close to the top of the survival list for most cancers and plays a major role in future discoveries through the elegance of our science and the value of our data being distilled into understanding, knowledge and then remedies, because big dreams require big data. Joe Biden praised the significance of the agreement between Victoria and the US to share patient histories with full privacy protections during his tour of the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre, noting:

You are making cancer research a team sport …

This connection is our foundation for a quest that is as personal to the President as family. It provides a universal opportunity to renew bipartisanship during a new era of counter-enlightenment. The Cancer Moonshot is designed to accelerate progress in cancer research and make more therapies available to more patients while improving our ability to prevent cancer and detect it at an early stage.

This proposal on the AUKUS health plan has been well received in Washington, and then there is the added value from philanthropy. Just in breaking news today—this is a wonderful development again, with Victoria leading nationally—there is $250 million that Canadian philanthropist and businessman Geoffrey Cummings is donating to the University of Melbourne to establish a centre to fast-track the design and development of life-saving treatments. The Victorian government is investing $75 million in the next 10 years. This shows why the Andrews Labor government matters.