It must be a frustrating time for scientists and pure mathematicians. They, like the rest of us, will be bombarded with election material for the next five weeks. But they will, perhaps, be more anguished by it. They will have to listen to the nation’s leaders utterly focused on a time scale of five short weeks. They will hear extravagant promises. They will hear about money being dealt out for the peripheral and ephemeral. It will be money for programs for bureaucrats and consultants to listen and report. They will hear of the budgetary deficit and the current account deficit, of interest rates and the lack of savings and investment. They will hear of glib solutions and vote-catching slogans. They will hear of artificial training programs to keep young people off the official dole queue.
But they will hear nothing of Australia’s scientific, research and engineering base. They will hear nothing of Australia’s fragile place in the world’s scientific and research community. None of these critical matters will sound in a vote in five weeks, so who cares? What does it matter what happens five or ten years away when one can be thrown out of political office in five weeks?
Yet Australian science and research is at a crucial point. If our total research effort, whether government or privately funded, falls below a critical mass, Australian scientists will get shut out of a lot of the international intercourse in science and research. If we do not contribute significant research, international science will ignore us. We will not be pulling our weight. At present our percentage contribution to world research … somewhere between 1 and 2 per cent in most significant fields … earns us an international place. It means we get far more than we put in.
But if governments and industry are too stupid to continue and increase the contribution, this investment (at present providing returns far higher than the input) will be lost to us. Moreover, the best Australian scientists, seeing a bleak future, will leave for brighter prospects overseas … accelerating the decline.
Instead, we will have a few feel-good government programs oiling noisy pressure groups.
Even though the Government can point to some increases in research budgets, the problem is that other nations are doing much better, so comparatively, Australia is falling behind.
The Australian Academy of Science in its Science and Technology Priorities for the Next Australian Government, the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies and the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee have the same message: our science and research base must be maintained. Long-term, pure research cannot be significantly funded by industry; the returns are too long-term, particularly in, say, astronomy and pure mathematics. Investment in scientific capital must be done by government.
This is not just a cry from another selfish group seeking taxpayers’ money to be consumed without future return. It is a realistic statement of the need for investment now, to improve future living standards. A bipartisan approach is needed to ensure that the undeserving chicks with the loudest chirp do not get all the feed.