Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The science and research community have been holding their breath recently. Numerous programs were paused as the government looked around for ways to achieve a politically motivated surplus. This comes on the back of previous years where there were threats to health and medical research grants, in particular, that would have disproportionately impacted on my home state of Victoria, and the electorate of Melbourne, which is home to some world-leading health and medical research facilities, as well as generally excellent research institutions.

Unfortunately, as we have seen recently from MYEFO, a deep cut was made to research funding for universities—$499 million from the Sustainable Research Excellence in Universities scheme over the next four years. That is half a billion dollars. The SRE scheme was announced in 2009, and is designed to help universities pay for costs associated with doing research: water, electricity, property costs, IT and other infrastructure. These cuts will come into effect almost immediately, with a $79 million decrease in payments in 2013. This approach from Labor to funding research in Australia is short-sighted. While the money for research grants that directly supports people and projects has been maintained, the funding for the infrastructure that enables this research has been slashed.

When you talk to researchers, they will tell you that this infrastructure funding is critical. It is what keeps the researchers in their job, and able to do their job. When one goes to the private sector or to philanthropists to ask for money, researchers will tell you that it can be notoriously difficult to get funding for this kind of infrastructure, perhaps because it is not as attractive or sexy as funding a direct research cure, but it is essential, because, without it, the research does not take place.

The Group of Eight, which represents some of Australia's leading universities, believes the research cuts will result in the loss of around 1,450 job opportunities. The University of Melbourne, one of the most research intensive institutions in the country, will lose between $90 million and $100 million over the next four years, and 200 planned jobs may have to be abandoned. This is coming straight from the people who are directly affected. As the University of Melbourne Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research, Jim McCluskey said: 'Victoria is a very research intensive state. We are disproportionately hit.'

Professor Hilmer has said, 'These short-sighted decisions will have adverse long-term consequences for Australia’s performance internationally in research, and will also adversely impact on Australia’s economic capacity and make our universities less attractive to international students and researchers'.

Professor Daine Alcorn, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President, Research and Innovation at RMIT, said that the cuts were 'devastating':

This is what provides support for the overheads – the electricity, the water, the space you live on – for all of these programs. Cutting $499 million over the next four years is really taking back a promise the government gave to actually fund this kind of research in an appropriate way. It will have a devastating effect.

Research is an investment, not a cost. There are serious economic, environmental and social benefits that come from investing in Australian research. Every dollar that goes towards health and medical research, for example, results in more than two dollars in health benefits. The economic benefit of government investment in the cooperative research centres has exceeded a return ratio of three to one. When the government paused all grant funding, many researchers worried about their jobs and the future of their work.

The situation has been particularly discouraging for young researchers who are struggling to establish their careers, and many have already begun to look overseas for more attractive job offers.

If we treat research in this country as a funding tap that can be turned on and off, then the benefits will not grow and our best and brightest will not stay. And if we treat it as a honeypot to be raided every time we need to find money to bring forward a political surplus, then confidence in the sector will suffer. We have seen today the welcome release of the government's Asian century white paper, which has references all through it to innovation and research and how we are going to position ourselves over the next 20 years. But we will not do that unless there is secure funding that researchers can rely on, not just from year to year but from three years to three years and five years to five years. If we are put in this position, where every time there is a need to come back to a politically motivated surplus it puts researchers at risk, then we as a country, and especially as a state in Victoria and a city in Melbourne, will suffer.

The Greens value research. The Greens will defend research. I am pleased that this motion will attract the support of others in the parliament. The government should quarantine research from cuts over the next few years.

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