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

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Melbourne moving the following motion forthwith—

That private Members’ business item No. 12, Government investment in research, standing in the name of the Member for Melbourne on the Notice Paper, be returned from the Federation Chamber and considered immediately

There was a motion that everyone thought we were going to be voting on today. That is a motion that, amongst other things, notes the growing concern amongst the science and research community about security of funding. The important and operative part calls on the Treasurer to guarantee that science and research funding will be protected this financial year and rule out any attempt to defer, freeze or pause Australia Research Council, National Health and Medical Research Council or other science and research grants in an attempt to achieve a budget surplus.

This was a motion that was debated in October last year. This was a motion that the selection committee recommended for a vote. This was a motion that was expected to turn up on the Notice Paper today. But, when we turned up, the motion was not included on the Notice Paper. There are a number of potential reasons for that. One might be that the motion was likely to succeed. I anticipate that there will be a significant amount of support from the crossbench, and I understand the coalition may even be supporting it as well. If that is the reason for its omission, that is of concern. Private members' motions in this place that have been through the proper process and have been waiting since last year for a vote ought not be pulled simply because of the potential outcome. I also know, of course, that there has been a recent reshuffle and that there is a new science and research minister. But this is not a motion that calls on the science and research minister to do anything. It is a motion that calls on the Treasurer to make certain guarantees.

It is urgent that we suspend standing orders and vote on this now, because now is obviously the time that the government is beginning the process of preparing the budget. Budget preparation time is a time of growing and great consternation amongst many in the science and research community in this country. In MYEFO we saw the sustainable research excellence program cut by half a billion dollars over the forward estimates. Two budgets before that, scientists and researchers had to mobilise in their lab coats in their thousands around the country to prevent mooted cuts to health and medical research.

In our view, the reason that we are in this problem where the government is looking around at places like science to save some money is because of the failure to secure the country's revenue base and raise the money that we need to fund the services and expenditures that Australians expect. One of those, which is in my electorate of Melbourne but especially in Victoria, is the area of science and research. We need to be clear that science and research ought not be a honeypot that governments go back to every time they need a bit of money to make the budget balance. Science and research will be a foundation of a clean economy and will set us up for after the mining boom. The cuts of course hurt jobs. The cuts to the sustainable research excellence program are going to hurt, according to the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research at Melbourne University, with somewhere in the order of 1,400 jobs being threatened. Those jobs are just as important as jobs in the manufacturing industry. It is not just the cuts, it is the speculation—

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