Science at the Shine Dome 2010
President's address
Thursday, 6 May 2010
Distinguished quests, Fellows and friends of the Academy. As President of the Australian Academy of Science, I welcome you to the fifty-fifth anniversary of the formal ceremonies of the Australian Academy of Science.
This is my fourth and last Presidential Address. To describe the past four years as interesting would be an understatement but it has certainly been a time in which I have learnt much that would have been very helpful had I known it when I started out.
What I have enjoyed particularly is the induction of new Fellows to the Academy and the presentation of our medals and other awards for excellence for scientific research. It provides an annual reminder, if that is needed, that the best of Australian science is up there with the best in the world. This year is no exception, as we heard yesterday at the New Fellows Symposium and as we will hear later from some of our medallists. If the health of Australian Science was merely measured by the excellence of its top performers, then there would be little cause of concern.
I commented last year on the Federal Government’s policies and actions in science and expressed my concern that the financial crisis could be used as an excuse for deferring action on starting on the implementations on the ‘ten ambitions’ articulated by the Minister for Industry, Innovation, Science and Research, Senator Carr in his response to the National innovations review.
The subsequent 2009-2010 Federal Budget announcements probably did take many of us by surprise because it did see an unprecedented 25% increase in the allocation on science and innovation over the previous budget, with the increase largely directed towards material infrastructure spending on the medium to long term.
Having sometimes been impatient of Governments’ apparent inactions I should also be generous when this is appropriate and this is one such time. There have been substantial increases in investment in research infrastructure shared across the higher education sector, research agencies and other multi-sector initiatives including the CRC program. And there have been commitments to progressively cover the universities indirect research cost and to indexation for the higher education sector.
Then there have been the Super Science Initiative in three important areas, with additional specific announcements of the construction of a new marine research vessel, and of the commitment to the Giant Magellan Telescope.
These and the other measures then announced are to be applauded and we believe that together, the government’s initiatives announced in last year’s budget for research infrastructure, strengthen considerable one of the foundations of Australias science base and that it will lead to significant new science breakthroughs across all areas of science and technology.
Also of importance in last year’s budget was the attention given towards programs that encourage business investment in innovation and that facilitate the transformation of the best research ideas into successful commercial realities. These include the changes to the R&D tax credit scheme, the establishment of Commercialisation Australia, the funding extension to National ICT Australia, and the major Clean Energy initiative. These initiatives provide substantially increased incentives for turning the outputs of science to commercial products. Science, after all, is the practical instrument for progress and improvement in the human condition. But also any success of this transformation provides powerful arguments for further investing in the underpinning research.
So, if we are happy with last year’s budget, what do we expect from the 2010-11 budget? I think that we must recognize that it will be an unusually difficult budget as the government attempts to reign in deficits during an election year. And as much as we would like otherwise, it is probably unrealistic to expect major new funding for research and innovation over and above what has already been committed.
But there are some things that we will be looking for. A number of the programs announced in the past budget have not yet started and one of the things that we will be watchful of is slippage in these programs as a result of the 2010-2011 budget.
Also, policy announcements have been made during the year for which no funding was allocated. This includes, for example, the Science Communication Strategy Inspiring Australia: A National Strategy for Engagement with the Sciences. This and the others are important complementarities to the Government’s earlier commitments and should not slip further.
Where we have expressed concern is whether the human infrastructure required to support the effective and creative use of the new research infrastructure, arising from both the Labor Government initiatives and from the previous Government’s NCRIS initiative, will be there. Some of the initiatives announced in last year’s budget do go some way to reducing this concern: The doubling of Australian Postgraduate Awards by 2012 is one but the stipend remains close to the poverty margin – it is still at the level of a car park attendant – and not attractive enough to attract enough of the best young minds to graduate research programs and both the research laboratories and industry will be the poorer for this.
The creation of the 100 Super Science Fellowships over two rounds is another, as is the implementation of the Future Fellowships announced in 2008.
But I believe that we are still loosing too many of our best young researchers by not providing adequate career structures, particularly ones that allow the young researchers to develop their early career overseas with confidence that there will be positions for them a few years down the road. This has to remain a high priority, in particular with an expansion of the science base and of the need to replace an ageing workforce. In the Universities alone, 56% of its workforce is due to retire over the next 20 years. This comes on top of the normal attrition of academic staff, the growth in population and an increasing percentage of people seeking higher education. Now, a simple calculation that does not even require the back of an envelope, says that with some 45,000 full time equivalent academic teaching and research staff in our universities in 2007, at least 25,000 will have to be found for the Universities alone. Not all of these, of course, will be in the science and technology area but you begin to see the magnitude of the challenge, particularly when the additional factors are taken into consideration. It becomes clear that much more attention needs to be given to the development of career paths of quality young researchers in all areas of research and higher education. It is a matter that the Academy will need to develop further and be prepared to continue to argue for.
On science policy, the Academy mostly focuses on presenting the scientific evidence required to underpin the formulation of sound policy – the science for policy - rather than on the development of the policy itself. But when policy vacuums develop then this distinction becomes hard to maintain. The current backflip, and I can think of no kinder word, on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, is one such time. The announced delay of three years in bringing the current CPRS proposal back to parliament for approval effectively puts it into limbo forever since it would come up again in another election year. What I urge is that these three years be used as a window of opportunity to develop a much improved proposal. The current one is widely recognized as flawed, and even Professor Garnaut has been heard to say that even a carbon tax is better than a bad CPRS. This is one chalice, I hope not poisoned, that I leave with the incoming Council: what role can the Academy play - working with the other learned academies - to influence the public debate that has to be had on reducing greenhouse gas emissions?
Another area where Government decisions in the last year have been welcomed is education. The Academy is concerned about education not only because it ensures that Australia has future generations of outstanding scientists but also because of the importance of having a scientifically literate society: a society that understands how science works and that can contribute constructively to the debate on how to make effective and creative use of new technologies as they emerge.
Two aspects of the announced ‘Education Revolution’ are particularly pertinent in this context:
- The creation of National Partnership programs that place emphasis on improving teacher quality, improving literacy and numeracy standards, and improving the quality of education in low socio-economic status communities.
- The establishment of the National Curriculum Board – the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority – to develop a national curriculum for all students from kindergarten to year 12.
The Academy’s interest in education extends to actually doing something about it through our two programs developed in partnership with the Department of Education and Work Place Relations.
In fact no Presidential address would be complete without using this as an opportunity to update you on our flagship program Primary Connections, steered so ably by Ms Shelley Peers and her crew. Today we have reached out to 59% of Australian Government schools. South Australia has, in fact, taken the decision before the national curriculum has been fully defined - to invest in Primary Connections for a statewide rollout of over the next three years.
The Science by Doing program led by Professor Dennis Goodrum, is also beginning to impact on science education in Australia’s junior Secondary Schools.
To reach this point has been a huge effort and not one without its challenges!
In particular, since the program started under my predecessor, Jim Peacock, the Australian educational scene has changed considerably. Foremost is the introduction of the already mentioned National Curriculum, the first phase of which, including mathematics and science, is underway.
Important to the Academy is that Professor Goodrum has provided leadership to the writing team that prepared the draft curriculum and this has been of immense value in keeping the teaching materials for both programs aligned with the evolving curriculum.
The significance of the Academies education work became in fact clear at the launch of the Draft Curriculum when the Chief Executive of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, Professor Barry McGaw, complemented the Academy for its contribution to the design of the national curriculum and for its development of resources for both Primary Connections and Science by Doing.
So what of the future of this program? By the end of the current program in mid 2011 a full suite of PC curriculum units will have been developed, rigorously trialed and evaluated and delivered consistent with the draft national curriculum. This, possibly with only minor change, should meet the final national curriculum requirements and be suitable for use across Australia’s primary schools. But the challenge of education is that it is not static. Materials will need updating and there will be a continuing call on the training and re-training of facilitators. How this is to be achieved is something that the Academy’s Council is considering; a task not made easy by the fluid nature of the entire education scene with no agreements between Federal and State Governments yet in place.
Science by Doing is nearing the end of its first phase of developing, trialling and evaluation of teaching materials. It also is faced with the problem of the original guidelines having changed as a result of the National Curriculum. In consequence the Science by Doing program has for the present shifted away from curriculum resources to the development of professional learning resources to assist teachers to develop their own teaching materials. This program will require considerable post Phase-1 work to align the contents with the final curriculum requirements, to prepare supplemental digital resources and to train future facilitators.
Both programs, Primary Connections and Science by Doing are too important for the Academy to walk away from and we will be exploring ways with Governments, Federal and State, to ensure that Australia’s students will be able to enjoy the quality teaching of science in our schools and to contribute to the development of a scientifically literate society.
In my last few minutes I want to make a few comments about the Academy’s international programs because the establishment of international networks to advance Australian science permeates much of our activities. Earlier this year we launched our report Internationalisation of Australian Science. In it we argued for the development of an integrated national strategy that focuses and supports international science efforts across all government departments and agencies to provide a competitive basis for Australia’s science in the 21st century.
At about the same time the Royal Society released its New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy report and there is a bill before the US Congress to establish a Global Science Program for Security, Competitiveness and Diplomacy that will through the Department of State, amongst other things, establish global research competitive grants to address a number of global challenges. It will create scientific fellows to augment the scientific expertise of the Department of State and it will create up to 12 roving science envoys whose charge includes: to represent the commitment of the US to promote, in collaboration with other countries, the advancement of science and technology.
I mention these not just because the three documents reach similar conclusions but also because other countries are following suite and the competition for the best research talents is going to be fierce, a competition in which Australia, with well educated and trained researchers coming through the ranks but whose prospects at home may be uncertain, stands to loose. The Academy has to continue to keep this issue at the forefront and to argue for enhanced resources that enables our young researchers to benefit from international linkages but that at the same time provides assurance that competitive career opportunities are there at home.
There is no time today to enter into details of our current international programs but I will say a few final words on the matter of science diplomacy which features strongly in all three documents. The world is faced with major challenges that are global and international in nature and scale and at a time of increasing scientific and technological complexity. To this I can add that this is occurring at a time when national governments also appear to be less capable of dealing with these same issues at home.
One area where the Academy is playing a greater role than before is in its active involvement with some of the non-governmental international science organizations. I will only mention two that focus on our region.
ICSU, or the International Council for Science will not be a stranger to many of you. Despite not infrequent frustrations with this body we have decided to increase our involvement in it through the regional Asia-Pacific Committee of which our former Foreign Secretary is now its Chair.
The Academy has also agreed to serve as President of the Federation of Asian Science Academies and Societies. Both decisions reflect our recognition of the growing importance of the S&T developments in the region that can be beneficial to Australian science; a recognition of common interests in areas as diverse as natural hazards and infectious diseases; a belief that Australia can contribute to building the capacities of some members to make more effective use of science and technology to the benefit of their societies; and, because it has the potential to make contributions to the social stability of the region.
Recognizing that there are merits in doing this is one step. Finding the resources to contribute effectively represents another challenge that I leave to the incoming Council.
I will cease at this point not only because time has run out but because if I reveal any more of the chalices left behind, the new President may change her mind. As I said at the start, my Presidency ends tomorrow. I am very pleased to be able to announce that the new President is Suzanne Cory, Professor of Medical Biology. She is one of Australia’s most distinguished scientists and the past Director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne.
Now let us begin with the important part of this morning’s celebration: the introduction of our new Fellows.
