As we mark the midpoint of 2025, AusBiotech CEO Rebekah Cassidy reflects on our key achievements and the opportunities shaping the sector.
The first half of this year has been a pivotal one for AusBiotech as we have sought to advance the voice of our sector, strengthen strategic partnerships and progress new programs designed to support the sector's, and our members', success over the medium and long term.
My team and I are grateful to our members — long-standing and new — and sector partners for their continued openness and collaboration as we seek to shift the dial on long-standing challenges and advance new opportunities.
Policy agenda: Our message to government and policymakers has remained consistent. There has never been a more critical time for Australia to harness the potential of, invest in, and prioritise its life sciences sector.
In a rapidly changing world, the work of our sector and our members is central to our nation's future health, economic growth, and health security. Continuing the decades-long approach to policy development for our sector, with well-intentioned but largely disconnected policies now spread across no less than nine different departments, won't deliver the step change required.
As our global peer markets build new partnerships between government and industry, and launch new industrial strategies designed to foster national biotech growth, investment and trade partnerships, the time is now for Australia to:
- Develop Australia's first whole-of-government National Life Sciences Strategy to set policy priorities, eliminate gaps and overlaps, and bring Australia in line with other countries competing for global investment and building their national capabilities.
- Establish a whole-of-government Life Sciences Council in partnership with industry to drive the strategy, address broader sector challenges, ensure value for investment and achievement of the government's health, economic, security and employment priorities.
- Recognise life sciences as a priority under the Future Made In Australia Act, creating the focus and cross-portfolio coordination required to maximise the sector's contribution to Australia's economic resilience, national security and health.
- Invest in data to drive innovation, better understand global interdependencies, and improve policy and decision making.
We are continuing to advance these four core policy priorities through formal submissions to current reviews including the Strategic Examination of R&D and the National Health and Medical Research Strategy as well as through direct engagement with all levels of government and our wider stakeholder community.
At the same time, we have been advancing a number of important discussions with government on bespoke challenges across a range of subjects from the RDTI though to regulatory challenges facing our Medtech members, import procedures for some biologics and much more.
Investment and trade: Within an ever changing global trade context, we have been advancing discussions regarding the interconnectedness of global life sciences supply chains and our ecosystem more broadly. We have strengthened our role as a conduit between members and government across a number of topics including global trade challenges, the Australia-UK BioBridge opportunity, and through our role on the International Council of Biotechnology Associations, to advance Australia in discussions about the future of supply chains and evolving multilateral relationships.
We have also strengthened our relationship with important agencies like Austrade. We were proud to announce our new Trade Start partnership and look forward to updating on this and other parts of our collaborative relationship soon.
Connecting our members: We were thrilled by the overwhelming response to our State Committee EOI and the launch of our refreshed Committees. Our State Committees play a critical role in elevating the voice of our members and ensuring we are responding to and advancing our members' needs across Queensland, Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia. We are now starting the refresh of our Advisory Groups and Panels, and will have more on this soon.
Advancing sector and global partnerships: We have continued to deepen important sector collaborations including through our new MoU with ANDHealth, and another with the UK BioIndustry Association (BIA).
Industry Activation Program: As an Industry Partner Organisation for the Australian Government's Industry Growth Program, we have delivered a wide activation program for our cohort's 30-plus participants. From tailored webinars and expert mentoring to national networking opportunities and investor engagement, we're equipping early-stage innovators with the tools, connections, and confidence to scale.
Creating connections and enabling knowledge sharing: Our program of face-to-face and virtual events continues to grow as we seek to enable new connections and share knowledge across our sector. In the first half of 2025 alone our BioBriefings, BioCheers, Women in Life Sciences Luncheon and Summit, Webinars, Medtech Invest 2025 and AusMedtech 2025 have brought thousands of people together across more than 20 events.
As we gear up for what will be Australia's biggest week in biotech and the AusBiotech International Conference 2025 in October, we look forward to welcoming even more people from across Australia and the world. If you haven't yet, make sure you secure your early bird registration here.
Thank you to all of our members and sector partners for their ongoing support. We look forward to working together for a strong second half of 2025.
