canberra

Costello: ‘puts us at the cutting edge’. Credit: TREASURY DEPT

For the first time in his four budgets, the Treasurer of Australia's centre-right Coalition government, Peter Costello, has highlighted the importance of science and research in his speech to Parliament, delivered in Canberra on Tuesday (11 May).

As foreshadowed by Prime Minister John Howard last week, medical research was given star billing in the budget, and is scheduled for a boost of A$614 million (US$404 million) over six years.

But other research budgets have been kept roughly at this year's levels. And the Science and Technology Awareness Program, which, among other activities, supported National Science Week, and cost A$3 million in the past year, is being shelved “pending review”.

As a result of the extra money for medical research, the National Health and Medical Research Council will have doubled its current budget of A$161 million by the year 2005. “We as a government are very excited [about this],” said Costello. “It will put us at the cutting edge to really develop new industries.”

The boost to medical research is the first outcome of a year-long review of health research that was chaired by businessman Peter Wills. Further recommendations from the panel are expected to be approved by the government shortly.

But although the medical and other measures may halt the declining support for research that has occurred throughout the Coalition's first three-year term, overall Australia is not matching the scale of increases for science seen in several other countries, such as Canada, with similar size economies.

One disappointment was that a special programme for biotechnology, which had been tipped to receive an extra A$60 million, will only receive A$17.5 million over two years — and this is earmarked not for research but for “development of a comprehensive new biotechnology strategy”.

But the government promised to use some of the funds to set up a senior ministerial council “to manage the biotechnology agenda” and establish a statutory office to regulate the industry.

University infrastructure, long a subject of complaint from academic circles, is scheduled to receive an increase of A$93 million, to bring total funding to A$288 million over three years. But this merely reverses cuts foreshadowed previously, and seems to be balanced by falls in other education programmes.

Funding of research grants remains steady pending the conclusion of a major review of the Australian Research Council.

Nick Minchin, the Minister for Industry, Science and Resources, has negotiated level funding for three national agencies operating under his aegis, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (to which he gave final approval for a new research reactor last week), and the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

The annual Australia Prize, costing A$800,000, will be continued to 2000-01 only because of its “significant lead times”, according to a budget document.

Bob McMullan, shadow minister for industry and technology in the Labor Opposition, attacked the government for “hiding overall decreases” across several portfolios with stakes in science and technology by not releasing the annual science and technology budget statement on Tuesday.

Brian Anderson, president of the Australian Academy of Science, says the academy is “delighted with the result in medical research”. But he says universities are still underfunded, and “there are no measures to reverse the downward trends in research by industry”.