Editorial 05 September 2001
Is Being a Basic Research Freeloader Good Policy?
The past several weeks have seen
some Australian scientific and academic heavyweights thumping the table in favour of basic
(curiosity driven) scientific research at our public universities.
First Graeme Laver and two colleagues, Arno Müllbacher and Paul Waring, fronted the Senate Committee looking into "The Capacity of
Public Universities to Meet Australia’s Higher Education Needs" on August 13th
and stated, "
And later, "
Laver et al. not content to let matters sink into
oblivion in the Senate Committee's Hansard submitted a 570 word letter to
Nature (23 August 2001, p 765) focusing on "How commercialization puts a
blight on research" at Australian universities and wrote, "Australian
universities are in a parlous state, mainly because they have had little or no
increase in real funding since the present right-wing government was elected in
1996. Lacking a tradition of private endowments, they are being encouraged to an
unprecedented degree to seek commercial finance for projects." The ANU
researchers conclude, "The ideal situation is vastly increased government
support for curiosity-driven basic research and a mechanism, including an
enforceable code of ethics, to commercialize any discoveries that are made in
this way."
By way of contrast on the same page Nature includes a letter,
"Biotechnology gets big backing in Australia", by Sandy Radka of Biotechnology Australia,
an arm of the Australian Government, extolling governmental support for biotechnology and taking Nature
to task pointing out, "For example, the Commonwealth government gave A$296
million (US$150 million) in the year 1999-2000 to biotechnology through funding
schemes such as the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian
Research Council and the R&D Start programme. This expenditure represents more
than 9% of the government's total R&D funding and is separate from the
initiatives discussed in your editorial [Nature 412, 765 (2001)].
"In limiting your article to individual initiatives, you did
not discuss the coordinated nature of the Commonwealth response to
biotechnology. This is best exemplified by the creation of Biotechnology
Australia, a body that implements and evaluates national biotechnology strategy,
and manages the government's non-regulatory biotechnology activities."
Though not intended the letter points to the fact that
significant resources of Australia's NH&MRC and ARC are given not for mere
curiosity-driven research but for what is essentially a technology, albeit a
very significant one.
Meanwhile, Peter Doherty in his lecture last month sponsored by the Alumni Association of the University of Queensland reminded his audience that, "The balance between more practical, vocational training and university education became hopelessly confused when the Australian higher education sector was vandalized by the Hawke government under the so-called Dawkins reforms of the late 1980’s. Since then, both government and the educational institutions themselves have spent a great deal of time trying to cope with the disaster that followed. Many teaching colleges that had a sound, practical mandate suddenly found that they were expected to function as universities. The universities were loaded with responsibilities for areas where they had no real competence."
Laver, et al.'s plea for support for curiosity-driven research at Australia's universities is certainly not in isolation, the vice-chancellors of all Australia's major universities have pleaded with the government to recognise that Australia's intellectual and economic wellbeing require a robust foundation of knowledge. For example the day before the publication of Laver et al.'s letter the Group of Eight said, "The highest priority for public funding should be to secure and expand the basic research effort which forms the foundation on which the rest of the innovation system is built and where the ratio of public to private benefit is highest."
And yet our Government's attitude appears to be one of assuming that all before it will contend that they are not getting enough in their begging bowls. The comment passed by Senator Brandis when cross examining Mairead Browne, the former Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Technology Sydney, is telling, "...may I say, Professor Browne, that most people who have come before this inquiry - and, indeed, I daresay most people who come before any Senate hearing into the allocation of Commonwealth funds who are stakeholders - would say, 'We are not getting enough.'" For a member of a Senate committee inquiring into the capacity of our universities to do their job to come out with such a glib remark is shocking and suggests a disquieting mindset. If it is representative of government thinking regarding the current problems of our tertiary institutions it is disastrous.
There appears to be an almost pathological lack of comprehension by the Government about what it is perpetrating on the nation and the people it represents. So far as research and development are concerned we see an overriding emphasis on a superstructure of technology and immediately applicable science with little if any positive thought about the foundations on which they must rest. Without the rebuilding of our university structure to provide a vital heart for education at all levels together with a basic research effort of world class through which to educate and train our scientists and innovators we shall not only have to import an increasing percentage of high technology goods and services, we shall have to attempt to attract secondary scientists and technologists from overseas while being able to offer only increasingly run down facilities and an unsupportive milieu.
In short we shall become basic research freeloaders and Australia will pay the price.
Noted in passing:
IBM maintains eight research centres, five outside the
US - Switzerland (pop. 7.3 mil), Israel (5.9 mil) as well as China, India and
Japan.
The Group of Eight
have called for an increase in funding R&D of $13 billion over the next five
years which includes contributions form both government and the private sector.
It is interesting that Japan has recently developed guidelines for upping
government investment for research by 5% in the coming year. On a per capita
basis that would be A$2.7 billion for Australia this year, far in excess of the
five year $6.75 billion suggested by the Go8 that the Commonwealth Government
should be investing and a bit above the overall amount of $13 billion.
Alex Reisner