Professor Ian Chubb, Australia’s Chief Scientist, is an impressively articulate man who does a wonderful job as the country’s leading advocate for science – and he needs to be, because with a Federal Government that appears to place little value in science, Professor Chubb has his work cut out for him.
With no federal science minister and no national science and technology strategy (we’re the only country in the OECD not to have one) Australia is beginning to look increasingly like a science-free zone.
Recently Professor Chubb asked in public: “Is it only me that thinks we need to be more strategic?”
Professor Chubb has plenty of supporters, especially here in South Australia. With the closure of the automobile manufacturing industry and concerns over South Australia’s ongoing role in the Commonwealth defence program, there are very pressing imperatives to create new economic capacity for our state.
In this regard, our science and research sector is as fundamental to our infrastructure as an expressway or an airport: it is one of the foundations upon which our future prosperity can be built.
In the four months since gaining the science portfolio, I’ve had a fascinating journey as South Australia’s wealth of scientific talent and resources has been progressively revealed to me.
The intellectual capital within our universities, research centres, hospitals and schools is an impressive storehouse of human knowledge. It may come as some surprise to many South Australians that our state possesses considerable research strengths in health, defence, food and agriculture, environmental management and advanced manufacturing areas, to name just a few.
The symbol of this intellectual talent is the striking new SAMHRI building on North Terrace, which houses hundreds of scientists undertaking health research of extraordinary potential. But they are only the tip of the iceberg: our universities hold around 100 research centres and institutes between them, many of national and international repute.
Perhaps the strangest aspect of the federal policy void is the fact that, as Science Minister for South Australia, I have no federal counterpart with whom I can discuss and progress these important matters.
The real challenge for South Australia is the creation of a dynamic entrepreneurial culture that makes use of this unrealised potential.
Unlike the Federal Government, we have a plan. For the last three years Professor Don Bursill, the state’s former Chief Scientist, worked with the Premier’s Science and Industry Council on comprehensive recommendations to make use of our science, research and innovation capacity and apply it to creating economic opportunities for South Australians.
The resulting policy, the Investing in Science Action Plan, firstly emphasises the creation of a culture that values research and innovation, and then secondly builds industry collaboration and entrepreneurship to translate ideas into economic benefit.
We can and should be a special place that respects and drives forward new ideas, turning them into jobs, products and prosperity. We know we can generate those ideas: the game-changer is to turn them into economic benefit.
Many of the policy levers that would help us create this enabling environment are set by the Federal Government: taxation reform, funding support for start-ups, commercialisation and industry incentives; the list could go on.
Perhaps the strangest aspect of the federal policy void is the fact that, as Science Minister for South Australia, I have no federal counterpart with whom I can discuss and progress these important matters. And as the only Science Minister in a Labor government in Australia, I am the only Science Minister in Australia willing to call the Abbott Government to account for the $878 million they have chopped out of science and research agencies nationally.
That axe will surely fall on South Australia’s science and research facilities. The silence from local federal minister Christopher Pyne is, for once, deafening.
These funding cuts will put a heavy brake on our ability to create the competitive high-skills high-value economy that is within our grasp. The cuts also send the worst possible message to investors and the wider world that Australia is a nation of scientific ignoramuses.
In contrast, as we finished National Science Week 2014, I have seen an abundance of enthusiasm for how science can transform lives. Watching shiny-eyed children gasp at demonstrations during the week has brought home to me the responsibility that falls on my shoulders as Science Minister.
It has given me added determination to see through our science policy to realise its greatest possible outcome.
Whatever future we face, science will certainly be playing a greater part, not a lesser one. It would help to have a federal science minister – with a national science strategy to match.
Gail Gago is South Australia’s Minister for Science and Information Economy.
