Mrs DRAPER —My question is addressed to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. In light of the government's historic commitment to double the funding for health and medical research, could the minister inform the House of the implications of this decision for the future of research in Australia?

Dr WOOLDRIDGE (Health and Aged Care) —I thank the honourable member for her question. I think the single most memorable thing that will come out of last night's budget is the fact of our commitment to medical research. I suspect that long in the future when people look back at this part of history the 19th century will be remembered as a century of industry, the 20th century will be remembered as a century of technology and communications and the 21st century will be a century of healing.

What we can do now with the understanding of the human genome was unimaginable when I was in medical school 20 years ago. The discoveries over the next decade or two many people believe will cause biotechnology to be as significant to the world economy as information technology is today. There are only eight countries in the world that have any capacity to be a part of this—in North America and Western Europe; and Australia. We are on the cusp of a great future wealth for this country through biotechnology. But, unless we react quickly, we lose our capacity to be part of what is the world's next great industry.

When we came to government in 1996, the NHMRC's base funding was $110 million. Far from cutting it, we have actually tripled it over the period 1996 to 2004. The NHMRC's base funding will go from $110 million to $330 million in constant dollar terms—a tripling that is completely unprecedented in any other country anywhere in the world. The Leader of the Opposition talks about smoke and mirrors. The real smoke and mirrors were in the absolute dishonesty in Labor's budgets in their last term of government, when they pretended to be increasing the NHMRC's funding but actually made it short-term hot money that did not extend beyond the forward estimates. In 1997 and 1998, so that we could continue to keep funding medical research, I had to take money out of radiology and pathology to prop up the holes you had left by pretending that you had actually increased funding whereas you had put short-term hot money in to try and con the medical research community. They will not be conned. They know this is a genuine change. They know it is historic and it is one that will determine Australia's economic future.