Science, Political Visibility and the Shifting of Votes -- FASTS Executive Director Comments. (October 2, 2007)

FASTS Executive Director, Bradley Smith

Bradley Smith is Executive Director of the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies (FASTS) and a former science policy adviser to Senator Natasha Stott-Despoja.

 Using the "ConScience" page of the October 2007 issue of Australasian Science he considers how to go about "Making Science Politically Visible".

Mr Smith opens with: "Every day the media is awash with stories on climate change, clean energy, drought or biosecurity. Yet science policy is almost invisible... In my view, science policy needs a rethink to take account of real changes:

• in global R&D, such as the rise of China,

• to face local challenges of adapting to climate change and

• to develop a capacity to identify which long-term socioeconomic objectives we want from science and evaluate the capabilities to do them.

"We need to rethink the current policy emphasis on commercialisation of research and its associated focus on patents, licences and start-ups," but he says the government "appears disinclined to undertake significant change to [the 2000 Backing Australia's Ability] framework until a compelling argument is made. The political reality is that science is not a 'vote shifter'".

"FASTS and others argue that the policy focus on commercialisation ignores 'preparedness', which should be a separate class of outcomes from public sector research. Preparedness describes research that identifies and minimises risks and associated costs in an uncertain world. Its value lies in changing behaviours earlier rather than later to mitigate a wide variety of potential environmental, public health or security threats. It is critical to science policy and why science policy should not be disconnected from the very issues the public expects science to address.

"Ultimately, preparedness is an argument about capacity and capability building in the context of uncertainty and risk. That is why it is critical to science policy and why science policy should not be disconnected from the very issues the public expects science to address."

It would be interesting to give our political servants a multiple choice quiz asking them, "What does 'preparedness' mean to you, choose one". Judges to be the voting public, top vote getter after the distribution of  preferences gets to be prime minister.