Science and the Politician 

In the third of an occasional series Harry Robinson comments on the motives that drive the political corpus

"An appeal to the whole political class"--Rupert Murdoch.

 When Murdoch blew into Australia and sounded a clarion call for more and more education, he aroused surprise not only that a media mogul would care about teaching but also that he made so much sense.

The phrase "global irrelevance"  won most attention, of course, yet he touched other buttons too.   Make upgraded education a "core priority," he said.  "We must make Australians smarter."   "Invest in our people".  These were sound enough but Murdoch went up the scale and laid it on thick for tertiary education--"... we have more to do than grow our universities; we must improve them.....We must go beyond the goal of making our universities bigger to make them powerful brands."

Trust him to put a commercial tag into the argument--"powerful brands."  It's worth a thought, though.  Does even one Australian uni aspire to the reputation and clout of Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Berkeley?

If the whole political class had heard the Murdoch message and had decided to act,  the country would be on a high road to splendour.  But what happened?   Not much.  Op-ed pages took up the theme for a few days, the government said, "Nonsense--we are doing all that needs to be done"  and the opposition made little of it apart from a dutiful murmur about Knowledge Nation.

About five days after the Murdoch speech, Radio National's Australia Talks Back took up the theme and exposed our immaturity. The debate quickly degenerated into a barney about funding high schools and never once rose to tertiary and research matters. A week after the October 11 speech, the Murdoch message virtually slipped out of the public eye.  With luck it will continue to echo around the offices of those who plan and scheme future academes.

What the Dirty Digger gave us was a loud wakeup call.  It would have been stronger if he had emphasised science instead of the generic "education" and we might regret that he did not donate a satellite or two, or even the Fox free-to-air television network to the cause.  But let's not quibble.  Oh hell, let's indulge another quibble. The core humanities--classics, drama, literature, history--are essential to a balanced society and they don't cost much.  Rupert could have put in a plea for Plato or St Paul or Goethe. He'd feel quite comfortable with such VIPs.

Cutting back to the chase, that phrase "an appeal to the whole political class" rides above the details of the message. It shows that the Murdoch view puts virtually no weight on prime ministers, opposition leaders, parties or expressed policies.   In that view, the class is a bunch of fairly homogenous people whose differences are minimal.  The current election campaign, stripped of argy bargy, shows a cast of pugilists fighting for the spoils while causes, rightways and wrongways are incidental.

The political process can be inspected through many a prism, none perfect, some more helpful than others.  Murdoch's  prism, created out of familiarity with politicians and the experience of making deals, gives one clear and coherent picture of the "whole political class."

 That's what science has to deal with--a whole political class.  It is not nice or rational, especially not rational. 

For the scientific class, that is a stumbling block, since science is nothing if not rational.  A scientist in private life may be foolishly, endearingly irrational but at work he/she is bound by the habit of reason. To say to a member of the political class: "Here are the central data.  They have been tested, scrutinised and double checked.  They are correct.  These central data force one conclusion: that the country is compelled to invest more in science--" is usually a waste of time.  The politico has heard that before from health operatives, defence aficionados, arts czars, the transport industry and more.  The politico will hedge his/her bets and never mind rationality.

The whole political class is made up of powerless individuals, no matter how they prate about "powah."   No significant decisions are made without sifting through support groups, the party room or caucus, cabinet sub-committees and so on and so on. To woo one or two or three apparently prominent politicos is an exercise in hope. 

The whole political class is greedy for one currency--votes. Votes come from outside the class.  The promise of votes will move the most sluggish of politicos.  And promises of votes come when blocs of people are aware of an issue and build up a groundswell for a particular groundswell.

In plain words, if science wants to change national policy, it will have to begin not with Mr Murdoch's whole political class, but  by persuading a far wider public.

And persuasion is an art.

Scientists are rarely artists.  To get what they want, they will have to go outside their own clubs, learned societies, professional alliances and such and engage people who are practised in hocus pocus.

The thought is disagreeable.  The thought of global irrelevance is more than disagreeable: it whiffs of damnation.

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The second in the series (14/10/01) --  Science and the Arts
The first in the series      (02/10/01) --  Science and the Media

Harry Robinson
who for 25 years worked in television journalism in Oz and the US and who was for several years air media critic for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sun-Herald.