Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was interested, listening to the member for Higgins' address, to hear this incredibly conventional view of what we need to do to take Australia forward. We are dealing with Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2014-2015 and related bills. There is a lot in the budget we will have the opportunity to talk about as other more specific legislation comes before this House, but I particularly want to talk today about a range of agencies whose funding will be cut as a result of the appropriation bills we are considering today.

It shows the government's very narrow and short-sighted understanding of our economic needs and what the role of government in the 21st century is in driving the economy forward. From my point of view, I am just going to put aside all of the discussion of the great unfairnesses in this budget for the time being and concentrate on the great stupidities. In particular I want to look at the cuts that have been made to science and research agencies across this country.

Implicit in all the commentary we get from the Treasurer and, indeed, from the member for Kooyong—

Ms O'Dwyer interjecting—

Excuse me—I mean the member for Higgins. I knew you were part of the Liberal royal family somewhere.

Inherent in the discussion of the member for Higgins—and you get it from the Treasurer also—is the notion that the thing government has to do is to keep as small as possible; to create the conditions for the private sector and then keep out of its way, and that will see business flourish. Indeed, they say very often that the public sector is crowding out the private sector and creating a constraint on private sector development, and that is what is holding our economy back.

Whilst of course one has to be very mindful of creating the environment and the operating conditions in which the private sector can thrive, this is to completely underestimate what really is driving the modern economy, where the big changes in the economy are going and where indeed those big changes have come from. Very critically, if we look at the great developments over the last 30 or 40 years, the vast majority of those, interestingly, turn out to have been developed by the public sector. These are development that never would have taken place in the private sector. Sure, once the research is done and the great idea has been developed, it is the private sector that grabs that and commercialises it, but without the active and strong investment in the public sector, we would not see those things that now form the basis of our economy.

The internet itself was developed in the United States under the government defence and science programs. We have seen the equivalent in Australia in terms of the development of Wi-Fi, which came out of the CSIRO. We have seen other developments—the touchscreen which is now increasingly part of the technology that is driving industry forward, again, was developed in the United States.

I had a very interesting example when I went to visit Oak Ridge Laboratory in the United States, that developed the atom bomb, to see the creative work that was being done and to hear the researchers in this government-funded instrumentality explaining the funding that they receive from Toyota for the sale of every Toyota Prius. A royalty is paid to the Oak Bridge Laboratory with each sale because the fundamental technology of that fuel cell that drives the hybrid car was developed in that government-funded agency through government-funded programs. The amount that has been spent in the United States through their largely defence-oriented operations and research agencies has been extraordinary and the benefit that has yielded for the US economy has been tremendous.

We have got some examples here in Australia. We know that CSIRO has been responsible for the Wi-Fi. I believe the CSIRO has also been involved in the development of radar, the first effective influenza treatment, and the Hendra virus vaccine, amongst many more. They are doing very, very interesting research that would not be done by the private sector. As one of the world's biggest producers of titanium, they finding new ways for the production of titanium and the use of 3-D printing with titanium. All of this really important but very expensive work that requires long lead times and very patient investment would not be done by the private sector.

So what is the response to the reality, for our need to be out there participating in the new science and technology? What have we done? We have absolutely gutted our scientific agencies and gutted the research effort. Within these appropriation bills we are looking at today we see cuts of at least $878 million across the forward estimates to our major science and research agencies. CSIRO alone are receiving funding cuts of $111 million and they are going to be losing approximately 10 per cent of their capacity and staff, and this at a time when we know we need to reposition ourselves, when we know that we cannot rely on just being a quarry, that we need to create a future for ourselves. If we had any sense, if we were looking at what has worked around the world in countries that have got that edge in science and technology, we would know that we need to be pouring more money into these agencies, not stripping them of funds.

I find it really very worrying that we have got such narrow-minded, undeveloped intellects seemingly in charge of making these very important strategic decisions. We have people who are very much locked in a small government Ayn Rand mould, and there is no doubt of that on the part of the Treasurer, who really do believe that is all we have to do. Where is the imagination that is going to drive us forward? Where are we going to find those people who are prepared to understand how investment in science and technology needs to come from the government in order to create those circumstances where we can be players on a global scale. We should not be entities that are just technology takers; we should also have the ability to facilitate being technology creators. We quite rightly talk about wanting to have our universities in the top 10 or the top 20 in the world, but if we are not investing in research, if we are stripping out $800 million over the forward estimates from research, then we are not going to be up there. We will not be fantastic world-class universities; we need to invest.

We had an interesting debate this morning in the other chamber. There was a lot of pontification about how fantastic this government was going to be for the development of the north of Australia. In the course of the hearings that have been going on with the northern Australia committee, it is very evident that the availability of water is the absolutely No. 1 essential issue that we need to address, that we need to get right for the development of northern Australia and for northern Australia to be able to take its rightful place and to have a sustainable level of development catering for the increase in food needs—not only for our own communities, but also for those of Asia to our north. The evidence we have been getting is that CSIRO have been doing tremendous work in this area. They have, over the past four to five years, produced some very, very important studies. But they stressed to us that for them to be able to really get a clear picture of the sustainability needed to enable us to be able to develop at an appropriate scale, then there is a lot more detailed work to be done. So what have we done? As I said, we have slashed $111 million from the CSIRO budget; we have reduced its capacity by 10 per cent at a time when we say that we want to drive northern Australia forward. And we know water is going to become an increasingly important issue as we have a drying climate in most of the southern half of the continent.

I want to look at the funding reductions. The Sustainable Rural Water Use and Infrastructure Program: that has been cut by $324 million. That is perhaps not so much a research program, but the purely research programs have likewise been cut. The water resources assessment research grant has been cut; I mentioned the science and research agency before, $146 million. So in addition to the $111 million that has been cut from the CSIRO, we have had an additional $30 million cut from other agencies. I believe the CRCs have lost something in the order of $80 million over the next four years. CRCs are really important because they bring together a very important collaboration of government skills from across a number of government entities with the private sector.

CRCs are in fact very much the agencies that will be driving forward innovation into the future. But we have seen a dramatic cut, and indeed the next round of funding has been entirely chopped out. Those CRCs are extremely concerned, because in February this year they were asked to make submissions for the next round of funding. A great deal of effort has gone in by those organisations, taking the government at its word in February that there would be an additional round of funding. They have spent many hundreds of thousands of dollars, to be cut out of the budget. That entire round will virtually not exist.

The Fisheries RDC would be one of the hardest hit by the changes. Fisheries research is also taking a big hit through reduced Commonwealth funding for the Fisheries Resources Research Fund program. If we go through and look at the list of projects that are being cut, the science and research budget that is being stripped, we see a critical failure to understand that there is increasingly an important role for government to invest in this level of science and technology. It is only in that way that we are going to be able to participate as something other than technology takers into the 21st century.

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