As National Science Week draws to a close and with a Federal Budget looming next week, it is a good time to look at some national priorities and attitudes.
Scientists have not been good at communicating their own value to society. They are too busy doing their science. But they are learning and they are making greater efforts at portraying the value of science to society. This year’s Science Week, though, has seen some evidence that scientists in the maturity of their careers are profoundly dispirited. They have had good careers themselves, but are not unequivocally recommending such a career to young people. The reason is virtually solely because of lack of funding for scientific research and education by both the public and private sector. The private sector has improved recently, mainly due to the performance of a few top private-sector companies, mainly in telecommunications. The public sector’s performance is declining.
The reason for that relative funding decline in the past two decades, despite overall greater wealth in the nation, is a poor reordering of priorities by governments. More money is being spent on vote catching. More money is being spent for short-term results. There has also been a change of attitude among government decision-makers that more should be done by the private sector. Alas, that change of attitude has not had an equal and opposite effect in the private sector.
The overall effect has been a dangerous slide in scientific research. The dangers for Australia are losing our place comparatively among peer nations and the loss of critical mass.
In a recent survey Australia was ranked 17th among 19 OECD and Asian nations in research and development effort. Research and development is a competitive matter. If Australia starts to lag behind countries of similar size and living standards, companies and individuals will gravitate to other countries. At present Australia gets a huge return on its research effort by having (only just) enough critical mass to warrant being considered as a serious player by other countries. This enables our researchers to be part of the international knowledge exchange. But if we don’t contribute a greater research effort we will be dropped off the research mailing list and become a backwater.
Greater public funding is needed in higher education, not only in scientific research, but in the whole range. Quite simply, there are areas of pure research where the private sector will not tread because the returns are too distant or are so reliant on serendipity that economic returns, though inevitably good when research is funded on a very broad front, are uncertain. The other benefit of publicly funded pure research is that the benefits are open to all to build upon.
Private-sector research, too, needs more private funding and greater public support through tax concessions (both the rebate and capital-gains tax reductions). This cannot be left to the raw market because it is failing. And even looking at in pure market terms, overseas government efforts are part of the market and have to be matched by us.
It is not a question of government picking winners, but engendering a public- and private-sector environment that encourages science, research and development so we can all be winners.