The head of lobbying body Obesity Australia fears a lack of respect for science within the Abbott government will hinder its ability to tackle the country's weight crisis.
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John Funder, a professor at the department of medicine at Monash University in Melbourne, closed his organisation's obesity summit in Canberra on Friday with a call for the government to honour its pre-election commitment to increasing bariatric medicine and surgery.
But Professor Funder said the government had slashed Australian Research Council funding and imposed a hiring freeze at the CSIRO since taking power, indicating it was not making science a high priority.
Professor Funder, who was made an officer of the order of Australia in 1998, said trusting science was important to ensure the government effectively tackled Australia's obesity problem.
An OECD report released last week found Australia was the fourth fattest nation on Earth with more than a quarter of adults considered obese.
He said when it came to early childhood interventions to prevent obesity, such as kitchen garden programs, the situation was too urgent to wait for decades-long trials.
''The evidence is there. They're not very expensive to implement.
''Get some runs on the board,'' he said.
Professor Funder said the government was not properly using evidence as a basis for its climate change policies, a situation he described as ''negligence of the first order''.
''The denial of climate change, which characterises some of the current government's spokespeople, makes it very difficult for them to be champions of science,'' he said.
''They're saying we want to be champions of science, but we don't believe what 97 per cent of scientists around the world are saying.''
The Abbott government attracted significant criticism recently when it announced it would not appoint a minister for science and Professor Funder said science had been made a second-tier priority.
"If we continue to underfund science we're really putting in jeopardy innovation, industry and economic prosperity," he said.
Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane said the Abbott government recognised the value of science, both as an academic study and because it was valuable to society and the Australian economy.
He said he wanted to use science to tackle national challenges, facilitate growth in major industries and boost productivity.
"It's my goal to see even more parts of our community embrace science and to see the public investment in science and research produce economic dividends into the future."
Professor Funder said the summit had reached a consensus that obesity should be considered a disease created by a combination of genetics and the environment, not a moral failing.
"This classification, recently adopted by the American Medical Association, is crucial to fully empower general practitioners to discuss the issue with their patients,'' he said.