CGT and PROPOSED RDTI CHANGES CREATING UNCERTAINTY IN LIFE SCIENCES Mixed messaging from Government recognising 10 year plus timeframes to take product to market
With
Rebekah Cassidy CEO,
AusBiotech
Professor Michael Valenzuela,
Founder and Chief Scientific Officer
Skin2Neuron
OP-ED SEGMENT
Filmed in Melbourne & Sydney | June 2026
Proposed Budget changes to the Research and Development Tax Incentive (RDTI) will disproportionally impact Australia’s biotech, medtech and health tech sector forcing more home-grown companies to consider moving overseas.
Nine leading health and life sciences organisations: AusBiotech, Pathology Technology Australia, MTPConnect, ANDHealth, Life Sciences Queensland, Life Sciences WA, BioNSW, BioMelbourne Network and ARCS Australia, have co-signed a letter to Treasurer Jim Chalmers asking for an urgent review of RDTI changes proposed in the Federal Budget.
While the sector shares concerns regarding a number of tax changes including to CGT, a proposal to limit the RDTI’s long standing refundable tax offset for companies less than 10 years old is particularly unworkable.
This is because it routinely requires more than a decade to progress life changing and saving health discoveries through rigorous clinical, regulatory and market access pathways.
AusBiotech CEO Rebekah Cassidy said the proposed changes were already creating uncertainty for Australian companies who are making long range decisions about where they should undertake clinical development programs.
“The long timeframes required to translate and develop medical research into health products for patients are not new news. It is well understood by industry and government that bringing these critical health products to market routinely takes well beyond a decade,” Ms Cassidy said.
“Companies in our sector spend years dedicated to the development of new medical products that help people in Australia and around the world.
“They bridge multiple commercial ‘valleys of death’ as they spin out of research into pre-clinical development, clinical trials, regulatory approval and manufacturing scale-up before revenue generation through market access is even possible.”
“Cumulatively, biotechnology has been Australia’s largest value-add export industry outside primary industries since 2016 and it supports more than 350,000 jobs across almost 3,000 organisations.
“AusBiotech has been engaging at the highest levels of the Australian Government and across the parliament since the changes were announced.
“We want to work with the Government to get these policy settings right and at speed so we can give Australia’s biotech, medtech and health tech companies the policy certainty they need to continue to thrive. We just need Government to meet us at the table.”
Source: AusBiotech media release (June 2026)
Credit: Michael Valenzuela, Skin2Neuron as case example
-
Addressing Wound Management
The cost of chronic wounds in Australia is estimated to be $3 Billion per year, impacting 420,000 Australians. Not only is this a national economic concern, but more importantly, is the suffering the person may be going through.
Australian Health Journal met with Hayley Ryan, Board Director and Chair at Wounds Australia and Director at WoundRescue to hear her work in chronic wound management, palliative wounds and pressure injury prevention to comfort those living with a wound.
-
Research finds many practitioners feel underprepared to navigate men’s distress
Movember’s Men in Mind expands nationally to equip mental health professionals with the tools to better connect with men before they reach crisis point. Research conducted by the Men’s Health Research team at Movember has found men account for three in every four suicide deaths in Australia, and more than 50% had sought help in the year before they died.
-
Values in Workplace Culture
Professor Sabe Sabesan, is the Clinical Dean of the Townsville Regional Medical Training network incorporating the Townsville Hospital and Health Services and the Townsville Clinical School of the James Cook University and the director of the department of Medical oncology at the Townsville Cancer Centre, Townsville Hospital.
The Professor recently wrote, “Workforce wellness and engagement have become buzzwords in healthcare settings since there is an intimate relationship between staff wellbeing and performance of the healthcare system. Wellness initiatives such as wellness champions and wellness committees have been set up in response to emerging workforce mental health issues. These are largely reactive rather than being proactive in addressing or preventing the root cause of mental health issues.”
