Editorial - 11 March 2001

Too Bad, We Lose, Nobody Wins

 It has been and continues to be a running sore. For at least the past fifteen years successive Labor and Coalition governments have inexorably eviscerated CSIRO giving every indication that if they could find a buyer, they would be relieved to sell it off.  Bryan Gaensler, the 1999 Young Australian of the Year and an astrophysicist now working at MIT, could just as well have been speaking of CSIRO as of the universities when he addressed the National Press Club in Canberra sixteen months ago. "...It's almost as if the Government has announced a 'Going Out of Business' sale, and the results have left our higher institutions in crisis --- typical across the country are forced redundancies, major staff reductions across the board, increased class sizes, and the merging and, even closing, of various research departments." [Full Text]
    CSIRO has been under ever increasing pressure to obtain more and more of its funding directly from the private sector. As a result, the organisation has become increasingly committed to immediately applicable research at the expense of basic and strategic investigations. So what? Isn't it right that the premier governmental research facility should be doing work of immediate social and economic relevance? Of course but not in such a manner that it precludes obtaining and maintaining the highest quality of research and administrative personnel. And that is precisely what has happened and continues to happen. CSIRO has been forced into a position of being neither an efficient organ of applied industrial research nor an organisation capable of  sustained world class strategic and basic research. The government must take action in the near future to allocate truly sufficient funds as well as allowing a reasonable degree of autonomy to Divisional Chiefs so that it can attract outstanding scientists to lead its divisions, individuals who can attract top class research staff. Otherwise it might as well do with CSIRO what the American Congress did with the Super-Conductor Super-Collider - scrap it and/or have a fire sale.
    What we are really witnessing in this country is the slow, relentless strangulation of Australian science. If fundamental science is not strongly supported and fostered the quality of applied research will suffer as well. Mightn't it be kinder to just kill it with a quick blow; if nothing else, it would look cheaper.

Just a year ago The University of Sydney News announced, "One of the University's most illustrious former professors and graduates is about to be appointed as President of Britain's Royal Society, one of the most esteemed positions in the world of science. 
    Sir Robert May has been Chief Scientific Adviser to the British Government and Head of the Office of Science and Technology since 1995." Obviously yet another brain drained from Australia, but that occurred many years ago and is hardly news. Of more immediate interest is the fact that the Royal Society chose him to succeed to its Presidency. As the journal Nature pointed out in a news feature of March 1, "In choosing an outspoken former government science adviser as its president, the Royal Society has departed from tradition." Peter Aldous in his write-up goes on to say, "Since taking over at the Royal Society on 1 December, May has been uncharacteristically quiet. But last week, after chairing his first meeting of its governing council, he was happy to talk about his plans. Pitching the Royal Society into the centre of debate over scientific controversies is top of his agenda."
    And herein lies the point. Isn't it about time that our professional societies such as the Australian Academy of Science to name just one, began to go public, go public emphatically, and advise and lobby the government and opposition parties as well. Isn't it about time that our political leaders genuinely sought their input. Scientists and the societies that represent them, engineers and the societies that represent them, are the only ones that can speak authoritatively to the public and its leaders. No one else can do it and no one else will do it, but let Robert May have the last word, "There were those who felt that I'm insufficiently dignified," he says. But Peter Aldhous goes on to report that he is not too worried about causing offence. "With respect to the interaction with some people, it will make things easier." 

Australian Robert May has the reputation of calling a spade a shovel, it mightn't be a bad thing if some of his local counterparts were prepared to do the same.

Alex Reisner
areisner@bigpond.com