Continued call for a strategic and stable plan for science

Australian scientists and researchers from the Research Alliance have put out a call to policymakers asking for a strategic and stable plan for science and research that will stop the country falling behind the rest of the world.

The alliance was formed earlier this year when a broad group of scientific, research, university and public and private sector researchers came together to call for a strategic national research policy. The CEO of Science & Technology Australia (STA), Catriona Jackson, told What’s New in Lab & Life Sciences that the alliance has since expanded to over a dozen member organisations, including the Australian academies of the social sciences and humanities - areas of science which Jackson sees as no less important.

The alliance met formally for the second time following the federal election and resolved to continue advocating for research and science as the engine room of national prosperity. Jackson stressed that the alliance does not have a position on the election results or the lack of an official science minister - she said the group exists to make statements on high-level issues relating to its fundamental principles.

It is significant, however, that a new principle has been added since the group’s inception. ‘Investing in our best research and our best researchers’ states, “Government has a clear role in setting priorities for research, and in supporting research which underpins discovery. The independent expert assessment process should be used to identify excellence and to coordinate the best researchers, research programs and groups.”

The alliance believes that Australia should aspire to invest more of its GDP in research and to do so consistently, as opposed to a stop-start approach which means we end up going backwards. “Whatever the government commits to research,” the alliance said in a statement, “the investment must be undertaken in a strategic, consistent way with a long-term vision for Australia.”

The alliance noted that the Business Council of Australia has also called for a research and innovation strategy - a three-way partnership between government, business and the nation’s researchers for a more productive and innovative nation.