This week and next week Canberra hosts the Australian Science Festival. The timing could not be better _ a time when many people in the rest of Australia are being falsely presented with a view that Canberra is a place full of useless public servants whose pruning will save the national economy. Hundreds of visitors, mostly schoolchildren, from throughout Australia will see the city in a different light _ as a creative place, as a place that expresses national aspirations.
The festival has an extraordinary array of activities and presentations that reveal the nation as a remarkably technologically and scientifically creative one. It will help present a message (perhaps indirectly) to the national government about the importance of science. That message is one that says the national government must maintain, through the universities and other institutions, a strong pure research base. Only government can do it because the rewards are too long-term for industry to be interested.
And as the array at the science festival shows, science cannot be fast-tracked, or confined to pre-conceived economic goals. The best economic returns come from serendipity _ the accidents and surprises of the applications that arise from a culture of broad inquiring minds. Without ensuring that culture is supported in Australia, our access to international research will be denied.
We need to think beyond next financial year’s balance sheet.