Susan Alberti hip and shoulders Julia over funding cuts

[Murphy'sLore]

Re: Susan Alberti hip and shoulders Julia over funding cuts

To be honest Lantern I feel indifferent towards this budget cut, my arguments so far have stemmed from a longing to play devil's advocate rather than a true passion for the policy itself. It would have killed me to see a thread like this go by in mindless agreement without any sort of sensible argument either for or against the policy itself, simply because of Susan Alberti's involvement. Judging by your well informed response, I'd say this is a success on my part. What I don't appreciate is the superior tone in which your post is set. Your knowledge on one aspect of this subject does not make you correct and I would suggest that you too consider whether your experience and knowledge put you in a fair position to 'make a call', and an apparently definitive one at that, on the effectiveness of $400 million not only in regards to research funding, but to our whole society.

Again, I do not profess to know enormous amounts about this subject, but I do take a very keen interest in fairness and equality, and how they are influenced by common human perception and/or bias.

One thing's for sure, if the government proceeds with this cut, they won't be doing it for votes, but for the merit of the decision, which is why whatever merit is in that decision deserves to be reviewed.

Surely you're not serious.

[Sockeye Salmon]

Re: Susan Alberti hip and shoulders Julia over funding cuts

Judging by your well informed response, I'd say this is a success on my part.

Well player, Aker.

You totally pwned me but only because I was so right?

[Scorlibo]

Re: Susan Alberti hip and shoulders Julia over funding cuts

They'll be doing it because they have said they will return to surplus and they need to cut, cut, cut.

And they are making a decision to cut on medical research, instead of on any number of other causes.

Well player, Aker.

You totally pwned me but only because I was so right?

Sorry, didn't mean to sound like that, just pleased to get some reasonable discussion on the issue.

[anfo27]

Re: Susan Alberti hip and shoulders Julia over funding cuts

The NHMRC (National Health Medical Research Council) receives something in the region of $750 million a year in government funding and that funding has gone up 10% every single year so for the supposed leaks saying that $400 million of cuts were possible was a bluff. My guess is the government have no intention of giving the research industry another 10% increase so they leak out that there could be cuts of up to $400 mill so when the budget actually comes out and there is no increase in budget the fact there is no cut to the budget will soften the blow and have everyone thankful they still have a job.
If that actually happened the medical research industry would be in ruins. I work in this industry and in the last 12 months we have only started to see the effects of the GFC afew years ago with researchers finding it more difficult to get funding as it is. As a few have already intimated, Autralia is one of the leading countries in the world in this area and we have top researchers from all over the world coming here to their research and if these cuts happen then we would not only lose these top researchers we would lose our own researchers as well and this field will literally go backwards.
Medical research is a growing industry with new facilities being consructed all the time. Across the road from the Royal Melbourne Hospital were the old Dental hospital used to be will be a new state of the art research building that has already had the funding approved so if these cuts went ahead you would have a brand new facility with nobody in there.
As Mofra has suggested, research has found that every dollar the government puts into research we'll save us $5 down the track.