Health department officials only began work on the $20 billion Medical Research Future Fund in April, just weeks before it was announced in the budget.
"The policy development process reads more like a script for The Hollowmen than the way an 'adult government' conducts itself," Labor's health spokeswoman Catherine King said.
The Abbott government plans to invest savings from health measures, including the $7 Medicare fee and cuts to hospital funding into the medical research fund until it reaches a balance of $20 billion, which is expected in 2020. The capital of the fund will be protected but earnings – which are expected to reach $1 billion a year by 2022 – will be allocated to medical research.
Questioned in Parliament on Monday about the process for developing the fund, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said it was based on other endowment funds "for which there is an abundance of precedent in Australian government I think the Leader of the Opposition is trying to suggest that somehow a six-week gestation period was inadequate " he said.
The government has said the creation of the fund hinges on its health savings getting through Parliament. But the $7 Medicare fee appears unlikely to pass the Senate, with Labor, the Greens and the Palmer United Party vehemently opposed to the measure.
Interviewed on ABC TV on Monday night, Chief Scientist Ian Chubb revealed he had not been consulted about the fund before it was announced in the budget.
‘‘I didn't have any role in it,’’ Professor Chubb said.
Professor Chubb said he did not know where the government had sought advice on the fund.
‘‘I presume that it sought it from the Department of Health, from the National Health and Medical Research Council. I presume that it talked to people within the research sector and perhaps outside the research sector with an interest in the outcomes of medical research. But I didn't talk to them.’’
Professor Chubb said he would have liked to have had input into the policy, and if he had been asked for his advice he would have counselled the government ‘‘not to make it too narrow’’.
‘‘Not to restrict it to a point where, for example, what it ends up doing is adding a few more tens of thousands of dollars to individual research grants or funds a few more research grants, that there are some big things that we need to do. We need to be able to fund clinical trials on a scale, we need to translate the results of medical research into patient care.
"We've not been terribly good at that. We're getting better at it. We start from a pretty low base and this might well be an opportunity to do things in areas and on a scale that we haven't been able to do before. And if we can do that, then it'll be good.’’
Outside the hearing, Greens Senator di Natale said: “Ripping out $50 billion won't make hospitals more efficient, it will just deny treatment to many people in need.”
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