The Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes has made a campaign-call for the budget of the National Health and Medical Research Council to increase from $875m now to $2bn in 2031-32

And it wants the Medical Research Future Fund to generate higher returns on investment so it can allocate $1bn a year to research in a decade.

The increases would amount to a 25 per cent hike on present spending.

“We should ensure there is continued strong support for medical research across the whole pipeline from ground-breaking basic research right through to new patient treatments, underpinned by support for our world-class research workforce,” AAMRI asserts.

The demands are in its “election policy statement,” released this morning.

AAMRI also calls for a national strategy to coordinate funding, “through a whole of system approach” and a workforce plan. “

“The path for advancing a research career through the well-trodden NHMRC route has become more difficult and unclear, with opportunities for women and early and mid-career researchers being particularly limited,” the association warns.

AAMRI is as one on planning with Research Australia, the self-declared, “national peak body representing the entire health & medical research pipeline”

Its election statement calls for a health and medical research strategy which has, “maximum impact on national priorities and exploits areas of international competitive advantage.” It also wants a workforce plan which has “circular mobility between academia and industry” with the next generation of researchers trained by “educators who are research active.”