EMERITUS PROFESSOR IAN CHUBB AC
Council member, Australian Academy of Science and former Chief Scientist
Science is not a cost. It is an investment in the future.
Other nations, such as the US, UK and the countries of the European Union, have understood this. They invested not because they had spare cash they did not want to leave lying around. They actually made choices and even sacrifices because they knew they could not afford not to. Some still do.
The importance of our national science capacity
Let me give you a couple of examples to illustrate the importance of a national science capacity to Australia. Our response to two health crises—Covid and HIV—was based on Australian expertise, and was the outcome of long-term investment only indirectly related to those conditions.
By early 2024, Australia had managed its way through several waves of Covid infections.
Imported vaccines had been injected into arms from early 2021 – and we had learned all about strength, weakness, determination and courage through a pretty traumatic period.
But we also learnt about the value of expertise; of having experts available to strategise and plan. And they had to have both the capacity and the courage to reassure a concerned public that what they faced could be difficult, could be discomforting, could be disconcerting, could be traumatising, but that we could manage a way forward to minimise harm in the face of uncertainty.
When we needed experts, we had them. They were there – able to advise political leaders as we faced a pandemic of unknown but scary possibilities; experts able to advise on how to reduce, if never eliminate, risks to Australians.
The advice was robust enough to stand against the new ways of throwing doubt on everything – what we now call mis- and dis-information, or just plain lying, when we are frank. It was this expertise that led to the evidence-based, public health options used by governments and the community.
Leadership Courage and Determination
At the time, I was reminded of how we’d done it once before. How decades of investment in virology and microbiology and medical research had led Australia to develop a world-leading HIV/AIDS strategy that was strong, bipartisan and effective. I was also reminded of courage and determination: how the federal Minister of the day even had the resolve to channel money through a convent to get support into a jurisdiction that treated HIV/AIDs as a moral issue rather than a public-health crisis.
But a key message from the Australian story was how we patiently invested in talent and built expertise, and how it was able to be mobilised when we needed it – because it was there.
Nobody in Australia was particularly focused on HIV/AIDS until it was first reported here - in the early 1980s.
I’d even wager that Australian virologists did not grow up thinking that one day there might be something called the SARS-CoV2 virus, and that they could be the first in the world to grow it and make it available to researchers globally. But our scientists were the first to grow the Covid-19 virus, just 10 days after the first Australian came home with the infection. They used their decades of training to produce what was described as a ‘game changer’ for the international scientific community.
Building expertise, creating knowledge, growing understanding, and being citizens in a world of knowledge were seen as laudable – and so Australian experts in a range of fields have been there when we needed them.
Steady funding decline from 2008
Australia built capacity and capability over time – a time when the use of so-called patient capital was seen as an investment in the purposeful building of talent and knowledge, not a cost. But from 2008 funding for research steadily declined and the picture changed.
While never arguing that we did not need to apply knowledge to find solutions to problems that Australians – or the world – faced, we began to ask whether we still needed to invest strongly in expertise to ensure the capability would be there when we need it.
By the way, that same expertise is our entry to the global bank of knowledge where we are 3% depositors, but where we get both to learn from the producers of the other 97% and to influence the big decisions of worldwide significance.
Australian Science, Australia's Future
In September last year the Australian Academy of Science published a report, Australian Science, Australia’s Future: Science 2035, that examines whether Australia has the national science capability to meet the challenges of the next decade.
We wanted to use the available data to prepare the most comprehensive analysis of Australia’s present science capability that we could. And we aimed to answer an apparently simple question: Does the science we have match the science we need? Or might need?
But how to link the science to what the nation aims to be?
To look for inspiration, we turned to the Intergenerational Report produced by the Commonwealth Government in 2023. That report sets out the pressures Australia will face in the coming decades. They include an ageing population and its care; the economic and physical risks of climate change; and the digital transformation, all in the uncertainties of a shifting geopolitical landscape.
So we refined our question. We asked: What science capability would Australia need to meet those challenges, and build an economy that supports a better future for all Australians?
We set out to complete the most comprehensive analysis of Australia’s science system undertaken to date – not just to count what we have, but to test whether it is fit for purpose.
We asked: If Australia is to lift its investment in R&D, where should that investment be directed? What capability do we need to strengthen, and what capability do we need to build almost from scratch?
But it was never just an accounting exercise. Science is not separate from daily life, even if it can sometimes feel abstract or distant. It shapes the quality of the food we eat, the security of the jobs we hold, the safety of the medicines we take, and the reliability of the technologies we use.
The challenge is that much of it is invisible to the public – until it is not there when we need it.
If we continue to sit back and coast, waiting to import solutions or to borrow research, if we continue to talk but not act, then we will fall further behind and import nearly all of what we need – including even our own resources transformed into high-value goods - at high cost.
The choice is clear. We can treat science as an optional extra, or we can treat it as the foundation of our future. We can repeat the rhetoric about being clever and innovative without backing it up with substance, or we can commit to building a system that will let us be both. We can let economics restrict our vision before we’ve even got one – or we can shape the economy to get us to where we want to be.
It takes time, it takes patience, and it takes persistence and courage. But to get to the end, you have to start. Are we ready?
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