"The academy believes that the strategic roadmap sets out many accurate priorities. Every Australian can be proud that our country can benefit from so many tools that will enable future scientific progress here. Better health, an understanding of the relationship between extreme weather events and human activities that cause climate change, value-adding to our resources before we sell them abroad, will flow from these investments, which will cost up to $100 million each.

"The academy welcomes the commitment to ensure that facilities that are funded will also receive help to obtain, train and keep highly skilled staff. In the past, there have been examples where excellent infrastructure was created, but the people who operate it were forgotten. If research is to flourish, we need scientists and technologists to make the machines work well.

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"This will pose a challenge, since the roadmap will not be able to fund training places in priority areas such as IT and bioinformatics, which are much needed. Perhaps there is a role for the university compacts here; let the universities that want increases in funding make a commitment to provide post-graduate training in these much-needed fields.

"In keeping with Minister Carr's personal commitment to integrate science and technology more closely with humanities, the roadmap argues for the importance of using knowledge gained from the social sciences and combining this into more traditional scientific and technological research.There is no point in proposing the most wonderful interventions to promote better health if people refuse to embrace them.

"There is also a welcome emphasis on the need for a new generation of high level computing infrastructure, flexible and integrated, with staff who are innovative and mobile.

"The academy notes two problems. The roadmap, quite properly, notes that the [technology] platforms must be nimble and open to new technological breakthroughs. In some areas, such as molecular genetics, breakthroughs come at very rapid intervals, often months rather than years, and nimble is the name of the game.

"However, the academy believes that this will require new ways of owning and thinking about infrastructure. Major pieces of research equipment must be seen and operated as Australian resources, and not held tight by the university or laboratory where they happen to be placed.

"The other problem is predictable: money. The report outlines many things Australia needs if we are to continue to advance as one of the best first world science environments. However, the academy notes that the amount of funding will be discussed at another place, another time. Will there be enough for all of the seven or eight priorities, and the integration between them? How will this fit with the need for more and better science education in schools, where the government cut its commitment in the last budget?

"How will the government deal with the necessary international links, when it has dealt a body blow to the International Scientific Linkages program, much of which will end next year unless money is found to rescue it?

"It is great to have a roadmap, but Australia also needs a car to travel the road. The academy hopes that Minister Carr is as successful in arguing for implementation of this roadmap as he was three years ago in winning a doubling of science research funds to the university sector.''

"The roadmap is a reasonably comprehensive review of Australia's major infrastructure needs. However this is a hollow report without the framework nor commitment to make this work in practice.

"It is a travesty and an embarrassment that the former National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy [which ended in June] has been allowed to decay and fragment without certainty for its future. The NCRIS program was the first real recognition that major research infrastructure is important in keeping Australian research at the cutting edge of the research we do best.

"The two things that we desperately need are firstly a concrete strategy to deal with essential major research infrastructure in Australia; and secondly a recognition that this must be a long-term and sustainable commitment.

"We invest hundreds of millions of dollars in major infrastructure and we expect most of it to be with us for decades. If we make a decision to invest seriously in infrastructure we must do this properly with planning to ensure that this is a valuable investment that we must protect and maintain.''

"The roadmap is welcomed as a useful small step forward. But it is of limited value as a stand-alone document in solving one of Australia's most critical needs, namely, the urgent need for major items of world-class research infrastructure.

"A plan without a budget for its implementation has very little national benefit. The plan is also limited in scope to investments of $20m to $100m over five years with no priority setting.

"There is an urgent need to renew and establish so-called landmark research infrastructure facilities costing more than $100m [that is] not addressed. We must have an integrated 10 year plan and funding package in this area.

"On a rolling basis Australia's scientists require a national investment of between $200m and $300m per annum, that is $1 billion to $1.5 billion over five years.

"The investments to be supported include the Australian Synchrotron, oceanographic vessels, radio-telescopes, the square kilometre array and many others. For example, the Australian Synchrotron requires $60m per annum for the next five years, that is, $300m, as just one facility in need of urgent upgrade.

"National benefits from the investment are very significant and vital to underpin: innovation and industrial development; building the high level skills base required for Australia to be a world-competitive innovative society; maintaining the international standing of Australia's premier research institutions such as the CSIRO, leading universities, medical, agricultural and engineering laboratories; and providing solutions of benefit to Australia for the major challenges to be confronted in the nationally identified research priority areas.''