COMMERCIALISATION AUSTRALIA WON’T DECLARE MORE INTERESTS, AGAIN
October 21st 2010 10:38
Thursday October 21, 2010
Daily news on ASX-listed biotechnology companies
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COMMERCIALISATION AUSTRALIA
Last week Biotech Daily reported that five biotechnology companies received $3.2 million of the $8 million granted by Commercialisation Australia in July and August 2010.
The companies were Biosceptre International; Pod Orthotic; Dimerix Bioscience; Madeleine Pharmaceuticals; and Sonomedical (BD: Oct 15, 2010).
Biotech Daily discovered in the first funding round that the chairman of Commercialization Australia Dr Laurie Hammond was also a director of Athlomics, which received a grant of $250,000 (BD: Jul 14, 2010).
Biotech Daily discovered today that another winner in that round was Kord Defence, another Dr Hammond-related company.
At that time, Biotech Daily asked the Department of Innovation and Commercialisation Australia for a full list of declarations of potential conflicts of interest and was repeatedly refused.
Biotech Daily then paid the $30 fee and requested the documents under a Freedom of Information Act inquiry and published that information last month along with an editorial explaining why transparency was important and how a one-line declaration could save a lot of bother (BD: Sep 10, 2010).
Following that experience, Biotech Daily again asked the Department and Commercialisation Australia for a full list of potential conflict of interest declarations by the board deciding the July and August grants and was told that such information could “mislead” our readers.
The Federal Department of Innovation said: “It is not appropriate to publicly disclose the details of potential conflicts of interest in relation to particular applications.
“Conflicts are varied and to report them simply can be misleading.
“The public interest is best served by an understanding that a robust process exists for managing potential conflicts and that this process stands up to external scrutiny.”
The process clearly does not stand up to external scrutiny because it is not being scrutinized externally.
One Federal Government department, the highly respected Australian National Audit Office, is scrutinizing another. But it’s not really external.
This is just one of many reasons why the Biotech and Related Industries Leadership Group called for the funding body to be independent and arm’s length from Government.
To infer that either Biotech Daily would write a misleading summary of the conflict of interest statements is bad enough, but the implication is that the readership is not sufficiently well-educated or intellectually capable to understand what potential conflict of interest statements mean.
Unfortunately, this led to Biotech Daily going back to the September declarations, only to discover that the Commercialisation Australia board has potential conflicts of interest in at least two of the companies involving at least three of the board members.
Until Biotech Daily hears back on the next $30 Freedom of Information Act inquiry, we won’t know the full extent of these conflicts of interest.
Winners in the most recent round included Quinessence Labs which was granted $1,220,000 for a quantum key distribution system for secure communications and QS Semiconductors which received $462,000 for a stored charge random access memory system.
While these both appear to be most interesting technologies it should have been said that board members Dr Hammond and Dr Susan Pond were both related to Qunitessence Labs and that Commercialisation Australia chief executive officer Doron Ben-Meir has cited a potential conflict of interest for QS Semiconductors.
When a funding body has such meager funds and so many applicants, the least it can do is be transparent about its spending of tax-payer money, let alone the poor image it gives the industry – in stark contrast to the efforts of the Victoria State Labor Government, which keeps increasing its funding to biotechnology.
Anecdotal evidence suggests there have been many very negative private conversations about Commercialisation Australia at this year’s Ausbiotech conference and not many, if any, that support the Department’s invention.
David Langsam
Editor
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