A brick wall surrounds the awarding of grants for Covid vaccines. The result is the export of billions of dollars of public money to foreign companies such as AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna, writes Rex Patrick.
Even though you pay for it, you probably have never heard of it. And that’s the way they want things to stay.
It’s a $20 billion grant fund. It takes applications in secret, assesses them in secrecy and hides from the public exactly who makes the recommendations on who will receive public money. The panel participants that recommended the last grant may well be a recipient of the next grant – nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
About 25% of their grants are awarded without a competition.
I’m talking about the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF), established in 2015 by the Medical Research Future Fund Act; a long-term investment supporting Australian health and medical research. The MRFF’s declared aims are to “transform health and medical research and innovation to improve lives, build the economy and contribute to health system sustainability.”
No one could object to a fund that provides financial assistance to improve the health and wellbeing of Australians. No one! Except when the confidentiality that’s wrapped around the fund makes it a potential corruption incubator.
Rex Patrick exchange with Secretary of Health. Senate Estimates
And at $20 billion, it has the potential to make ‘Sports Rorts’ look like ‘little league’ or ‘Car Parks Rorts’ look like a minor speed hump.
The Petrovsky affair
My interest in the MRFF arose early in the Covid pandemic. In early 2020, Vaxine Pty Ltd, a South Australian company, applied for two Covid vaccine-related MRFF development grants. The company founder and research director, Professor Nikolai Petrovsky, is a world-renowned and award-winning expert in vaccine development who has invented multiple vaccine patents and has been awarded over $50 million in vaccine grants, including from US and Australian government funding bodies.
Yet his grant bid lost to the far less experienced University of Queensland. By December 2020 that university’s vaccine had been abandoned after trial participants returned false positive HIV test results.
The result was the export of billions of dollars of public money to foreign companies such as AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna.
As a senator, I decided to look into the awarding of the grants, only to be confronted by a secrecy brick wall. The bureaucrats running the MRFF were adamant that the public were not allowed to peer inside.
At Senate Estimates in July 2021, Professor Anne Kelso, the head of the National Health and Medical Research Council which delivers some MRFF schemes, told the Senate the way in which it runs things is “common practice around the world”.
A United States exemplar
The United States National Institute of Health (NIH) is the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research, investing more than $32 billion a year to enhance life and reduce illness and disability.
The NIH doesn’t share the common practices Professor Kelso sought to defend in her testimony to the Senate. The NIH is brightly lit with transparency. In its guideline for grant recipients, it states:
“Except for certain types of information that may be considered proprietary or private information that cannot be released, most grant-related information submitted to NIH by the applicant or recipient in the application or in the post-award phase is considered public information and, once an award is made, is subject to possible release to individuals or organizations outside NIH.
The statutes and policies that require this information to be made public are intended to foster an open system of government and accountability for governmental programs and expenditures and, in the case of research, to provide information about federally funded activities.”
The guidelines discourage applicants from submitting information considered proprietary unless it is deemed essential for proper evaluation of the application. The guidelines further state that The Freedom of Information Act requires NIH to release certain grant documents and records requested by members of the public, regardless of the intended use of the information. NIH will generally release the following types of records pursuant to a FOIA request:
- Funded applications and funded progress reports, including award data.
- Final reports that have been transmitted to the recipient organization of any audit, survey, review, or evaluation of recipient performance.
Department of Health misleads
I have appealed against a Freedom of Information decision from the Department of Health which sought to deny access to the application and assessment of the University of Queensland’s vaccine grants. The department is holding firm in its submissions to the Information Commissioner, who is conducting the review. They have pleaded:
“The information was communicated on that basis, and there is a mutual understanding of confidence between the department and the third parties concerned.
This is supported by section 12.2 of the Grant Opportunity Guidelines under the heading ‘How we use your information’. In particular, the application material, including assessment committee discussion of application material, is provided to and received by the NHMRC in confidence. Applications are then considered in a confidential peer review process.”
But this argument contradicts the MRFF grant guideline, and in that sense, the department misleads the Information Commissioner.
Falk Lines: Information Commissioner fights for the right to hide information indefinitely, que?
The MRFF grant guidelines state in no uncertain terms that the government “may disclose confidential information … as required by law”. It then goes on to specifically state:
“All documents in the possession of the Australian Government, including those about the program, are subject to the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cth) (FOI Act).
If someone requests a document under the FOI Act, we will release it (though we may need to consult with you and/or other parties first) unless it meets one of the exemptions set out in the FOI Act.”
The grant participants go in ‘‘eyes wide open’’ that their information can be disclosed under FOI.
Let the light shine
The MRFF is an important public health initiative. It involves the expenditure of very large amounts of taxpayers’ money. The public have a right to examine the processes used in the awarding of grants and watch over the execution of the program, especially after grants have been awarded.
Those charged with managing the MRFF are likely to perform better when they know they are being watched. Those being watched are less likely to engage in malfeasance, misfeasance or wrongdoing. Conflicts of interest and failures of governance and process would be exposed, and indeed avoided because of the prospect of scrutiny.
The people at the Department and the National Health and Medical Research Council don’t seem to agree. They’re quite happy running a corruption incubator. But they’re about to be given a dose of transparency reality.
Public Jabs: multiple doses of lies, spin and obfuscation in Covid vaccine roll-out
Rex Patrick is a former Senator for South Australia and earlier a submariner in the armed forces. Best known as an anti-corruption and transparency crusader, Rex is running for the Senate on the Lambie Network ticket next year - www.transparencywarrior.com.au.