MAY 2003 EDITORIAL
Matt Hall is a pessimistic postgraduate student (conScience,
p.43). A “suitcase scientist”, he travels overseas frequently
to use the powerful X-ray beams generated by synchrotrons to study
drugs to treat cancer.
On the surface it sounds like a sexy career. So why the pessimism?
Hall is fearful of higher eduction reforms about to be announced
in the Federal Budget this month. He is not alone among the research
community.
This is not likely to be a generous Budget for science. Indeed,
interest groups throughout society will feel the pinch as funding
is stripped back to pay for the drought, war in Iraq, border protection
and continuing anti-terrorism measures.
Already the situation is grim for science. The Australian Vice-Chancellors’
Committee says that an additional $1 billion per year is required
to raise university research funding to appropriate levels. Meanwhile,
on the teaching front, university class sizes have increased by
22% since 1996 while numbers of teaching staff have remained static.
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Already Hall is planning his “brain drain” next year.
He hopes it will be only temporary. But the likelihood is that
he will set down roots offshore, with conditions here unlikely
to lure him back unless he can one day score one of the few Federation
Fellowships on offer each year.
Late in March the government announced the latest batch of 24
Federation Fellows at a cost of almost $35 million over 5 years
in salaries and costs to host universities. But while the government
trumpeted the “brain gain” achieved through the scheme,
its handling of technology exports has come under fire at a black
tie dinner attended by many of the scientific elite (see p.12).
Ron Grey of GBC Scientific Equipment took the opportunity of accepting
an award by the Clunies Ross Foundation to attack the government
for lengthy delays in approving the company’s instruments
for export. In one case an order took 18 months to be processed
because the bureaucrats did not have the necessary expertise to
evaluate it. In the end the mass spectrometer was banned because
it could be used to produce weapons of mass destruction.
Grey says that the brain drain is “a symptom of our commercial
weakness, not our research budgets” as “there are almost
no jobs for our technical graduates apart from government-funded
ones”.
If he delivers on his threat to move GBC offshore this will be
a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Guy Nolch
Editor
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