Jobs, Growth and... Science
Early next month Australians will head to the election polls,
and for once scientific issues have bubbled to the surface.
Both the Coalition and Labor have had their hands on the nation’s steering wheel
recently enough to give a feel for how much each values science, but in the 25 years I’ve
been covering science policy that value could have been likened to a Mother’s Day gift
that’s been rewrapped and regifted on Father’s Day. That may well prove the case again,
but for now CSIRO has been a bellwether.
“Jobs and growth” was the mantra of early Coalition campaigning, but this didn’t
apply to jobs and growth at CSIRO, which earlier this year axed hundreds of jobs in
areas devoted to climate change monitoring. The uproar over this led to the messy notion
that some of CSIRO’s scientists could be transferred to the Bureau of Meteorology even
though this would still create a net loss of scientiic capacity and a budgetary black hole
for the BoM.
In the meantime we’ve witnessed record temperatures, unprecedented bleaching of
the Great Barrier Reef and dieback of coastal mangroves (see Browse, p.11). By the time
you read this, the climate monitoring facility at Cape Grim will have recorded baseline
atmospheric CO 2 levels above 400 ppm for the irst time – up from 330 ppm when
Cape Grim was established in 1976. This is hardly the time to reduce our capacity in climate
research, and the CSIRO decision was roundly criticised by scientists around the world.
CSIRO has also served to symbolise the view that the Coalition sees science as a loss-
making venture that increasingly needs to pay its way rather than as an investment in future
prosperity. The appointment of entrepreneur Dr Larry Marshall as CSIRO’s CEO gave
fresh impetus to a long-term requirement of CSIRO to generate immediate revenue
through contract research for industry at the expense of “blue sky” research that has
unquantiiable long-term returns for which today’s politicians won’t receive credit.
The government’s National Innovation and Science Agenda, worth $1.1 billion over
4 years, continues this philosophy. It is pitched at suits rather than lab coats, with tax breaks
for “businesses that take risks and innovate” and criteria to ensure that “more university
funding is allocated to research that is done in partnership with industry”.
There’s nothing wrong with these goals. Prof Paul Mulvaney writes that chemistry
contributes “$11.6 billion annually to Australia’s GDP” and “offers Australia sustainable
economic prosperity” (see conScience, p.36), but warns that “long-term strategies and a
national focus are required... on several fronts,” including more investment by industry
in R&D, better university linkages and government support.
But such efforts shouldn’t be made at the expense of public good research into our
land, oceans and water. A true “ideas boom” requires investment in higher education and
training, support for pure and applied research, and inducements for businesses to trans-
late that research into jobs and growth.
While it’s easy to criticise an incumbent government, it’s worth noting that Labor hasn’t
made any irm promises about restoring funding cuts to science since they lost oice. Both
major partieshave been given the opportunity to present their vision for science in
this edition ofAustralasian Science(see pp.38–39).
Guy Nolch is Editor/Publisher ofAustralasian Science.
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