With an eye on the upcoming national election, the Australian government this week announced funding of more than AUD $129 million (USD $92.8 million) in program and enabling grants through the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).

And it's only the beginning. Health Minister Tony Abbott said funding for health and medical research will total more than $420 million during 2004–2005, more than double the amount distributed in 1999. The grants form part of a multibillion-dollar research funding boost announced in the national budget in May.

Programs investigating preventive health strategies for children and indigenous Australians were the recipients of the largest program grants, while enabling grants were awarded to teams working on epidemiological databases, a phenome bank, twins, brain tissue, breast and prostate cancer, and cell cultures.

The enabling grants scheme is designed to provide support for specific facilities that will enhance the national research effort, Abbott said. "All Australian researchers working in the health and medical field, will benefit from being able to get access to stored tissue and cell samples or to national databases," he added.

A group of researchers at the University of Western Australia, led by 2003 Australian of the Year Fiona Stanley, received $7.7 million over 5 years to explore determinants of child health and development. The program will investigate how children develop into young adults and examine the influence of families, nutrition, and growth and socioeconomic and environmental conditions.

The Children's Medical Research Institute in New South Wales will receive $1.2 million over 5 years to set up a cell culture facility called Cell Bank Australia, to provide a national repository of quality-controlled vertebrate cell lines. The University of Sydney received $2 million to establish a Breast Cancer Biospecimen Resource, which will store newly diagnosed breast cancer samples and clinical data on each specimen.

The funding announcement also included $7 million awarded to an indigenous health project centered at the Menzies School of Health Research (MSHR) in Darwin—the Menzies' largest ever research grant. The 5-year project is aimed at investigating chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and kidney disease, which are developing in early onset and in epidemic proportions among Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population.

"We will be looking at the most effective community-based interventions—both to prevent diabetes, kidney, and heart disease in young people, and to treat existing cases effectively. Most importantly, these interventions need to be sustainable over the long term," Kerin O'Dea, director of MSHR and project lead, said in a statement.

More funding announcements for 2005 are expected to come sooner rather than later, with polls showing the Liberal Coalition government in a dead heat with the Labor opposition and an election due before the end of the year—possibly as soon as next month.

The Shadow Minister for Science and Research Kim Carr has criticized the research funding program announced in the May budget, saying that overall expenditure on science and research will fall by almost 7% between 2005–06 and 2006–07, from $1076.6 million to $1003.7 million.

Carr said Australia's investment in science and innovation, as measured by expenditure on research and development (R&D) as a proportion of gross domestic product, remains well below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average, "principally due to our levels of business R&D." The Labor party is considering reform of research and development taxation and ways to lift R&D in the private sector if it wins the election.