Belinda Smith
speaker
2,605 appearances
27 recordings
4 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard yesterday
Belinda Smith’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 27 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 6.
Appearances
But there's been a spending gap placed on it.
Can you tell me a little bit about that?
What reasons did the Morrison government give for implementing that cap of $650 billion a year?
Really?
Okay.
And have there been any moves to increase that cap or at least bring it back up to the original billion?
So the fund is paying out less than what it was originally intended to, so two-thirds of what it was intended to, with no indication in the near future that that will be increased to the original billion it was supposed to be or even up to the 1.4, which it could be.
But that's not the only issue with the Medical Research Future Fund.
What are some of the other problems with it?
Yeah, the path to research success is littered with the careers of postdocs and lab heads and people who have not been able to get funding.
It just seems wild to me that we have $24 billion sitting in the bank accruing all this interest and yet people are leaving research in droves, something like more than half of researchers left active research between 2019 and 2024.
Federal Science Minister Tim Ayres came into the studio for a chat about the future of Australian research and he heard her statement.
What's your reaction to that?
Well, 20 years ago, the success rates were more like a quarter to a third.
Now it's single digits.
And as a result, a lot of the successful grant applications are from big established labs that show they can do the work.
They've got the publications behind them.
They've got the clout.
And so what we see is loads of young people leaving medical research or just research in general.
The Australian Health and Medical Research Workforce Audit found that more than 60% of researchers left active research between 2019 and 2024.
Showing 2081–2100 of 2,605 · page 105 of 131
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