Opinion-11 January 2001
Dr Bryan Gaensler
[1999 Young Australian of the Year]
(This speech should not be distributed or reproduced without explicit permission from Bryan Gaensler, bmg@space.mit.edu)
When I meet someone and tell them that I'm a scientist, I usually get the
same series of reactions. The first comment is something like, "How exotic!
I didn't know we had any scientists in Australia." And the question
that quickly follows is usually, "So this science stuff, what do we
actually get from it?"...
...the government no longer funds [university] salary increases negotiated through enterprise bargaining, resulting in an effective reduction of a whopping
20% into the money going into the university system. 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.
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