14 May 2013
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In this op-ed piece published in Fairfax Media in April, Suzanne Cory, president of the 
Academy of Science, challenged Tony Abbott to be visionary, in the manner of Robert Menzies, and to build his own science legacy for our future, and recognise that an investment in science and research is an investment in the future of Australia. Abbott failed the challenge, at least in this year’s budget. As reported elsewhere, science and research was a net loser, notwithstanding the announcement of the Medical Research Future Fund.
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If I had to name one of the big political heroes of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, the first to come to mind would be Sir Robert Menzies.
It’s hard to think of any one politician who had more of an impact on the Liberal Party tradition. But just as influential was Menzies’ impact on science and research in Australia.
Under his leadership, war and depression gave way to a new kind of scientific optimism. He led a massive expansion of Australia’s scientific research capacity, was involved in the creation of the Australian Academy of Science, and funded the building of important infrastructure such as the giant radio telescope at Parkes and the phytotron in Canberra. He also oversaw a tenfold increase in the budget of the newly formed CSIRO in just 15 years.
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In 1958, Menzies predicted: ”If there’s one thing that shines out in the history of this century it is the enormous capacity of science to expand its boundaries. By the end of this century … the boundaries of knowledge will have been pushed back to places as yet unseen and unimagined.”
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Menzies was right. Advances in science and technology over the past 50 years or so have totally transformed the economic and cultural life of Australia. Unfortunately, such capacity for long-term vision is increasingly rare in Australian politics. As we head into this next federal budget, most in the scientific community fear the worst, with reports and rumours of massive cuts to the CSIRO and other research agencies.
There is great frustration, too, over the wasted opportunities inflicted by the previous government’s indecisive stop-start approach to funding research, which has left a number of high priority areas neglected and new infrastructure underused.
For example, Australia has built a world-class synchrotron – one of the largest stand-alone pieces of scientific infrastructure in the southern hemisphere, which accelerates electrons to almost the speed of light. The synchrotron is key for research in medical science, agriculture, minerals exploration, engineering and environmental science. But without ongoing funding, it could soon close, wasting the billions used to build it and leaving its true potential unfulfilled.
Australia is also about to host the Square Kilometre Array (the SKA), one of the biggest radio telescopes ever constructed, which will advance astronomy, produce jobs and drive improvements in engineering, internet capacity and information technology. It, too, needs ongoing funding to achieve its enormous potential.
Australia’s backpedalling is occurring at a time when governments around the world are increasing their investment in science and technology. Other advanced economies, such as Britain’s, have had far more difficult financial problems with which to contend, and yet their politicians continue to recognise investment in science as fundamental to economic growth.
Australia’s socio-political, economic and research landscape has changed considerably since the 1950s. Perhaps more now than at any other time in our history, our nation faces a host of challenges – any one of which poses a threat to our long-term prosperity and our quality of life.
We must address myriad environmental, health and technological challenges. We must address our declining levels of numeracy and scientific literacy. We must prepare our economy for the next step as manufacturers leave, and the mining boom inevitably slows.
Australia’s prosperity is dependent on equipping our population with the skills to compete internationally in scientific research and tertiary education, and to use the benefits to contribute to wealth creation.
The government must use the budget as an opportunity to set high expectations and signal that Australian science is open for business. A government’s vision for science is essentially a statement about its long-term plan for Australia. Equally important, it must tackle the short-term emergencies in research and development – and tackle them immediately.
We still have no strategic plan for funding and operating large pieces of research infrastructure – fundamental to the national research effort. We still have no international science strategy, which risks excluding us from the vast bulk of scientific research that occurs outside Australia. And, with funding set to expire at this budget, there will be a collapse of the Future Fellowships scheme, making it difficult to keep our best mid-career researchers at home.
In June last year, the Prime Minister stated: ”The Coalition will provide the long-term, stable policies and vision that our nation’s scientists and researchers need to excel in their work.” More recently, he asked the science community to not worry about the lack of a science minister, and instead ”judge us by our performance, not by our titles”.
Mr Abbott must step up to that commitment; to show real vision and recognise that an investment in science and research is an investment in the future of Australia.
Menzies helped science in Australia to fly, and today we’re seeing the benefits. But without further attention, his vision for a smarter nation will be lost and we will stop short of being all that we can be. I challenge Mr Abbott to be visionary, and to build his own science legacy for our future.
