The abrupt decision by CSIRO to focus its strategy far more on commercialisation than on fundamental science is incomprehensible given the critical challenges now confronting Australia and the science needed for their resolution.

The tension between commercialisation and fundamental science is nothing new; it has been a continuing struggle since CSIRO was founded in 1949. As its founding father, Sir David Rivett, said at the time: "The pursuit of knowledge demands complete intellectual honesty; a willingness to admit ignorance where there is no knowledge, and to travel the road to knowledge with unrestricted, passionate and fearless enthusiasm.

"It is right to emphasise the importance of application, as opposed to over-emphasise. However so much is this done in Australia that it has become necessary at times to plead for greater opportunity for our people to freely seek knowledge in a spirit of ultimate faith, rather in a spirit of immediate profit-seeking."

Those sentiments have never been more apposite than today. Over the last two decades, the time horizons of the commercial, financial and political worlds have compressed in response to neoliberal insistence on the dominance of the market and its demand for instant gratification; a process which has brought the world to the brink of collapse. Today, the long term is three or four years if you are lucky. Anything beyond is off the agenda, a situation which will not change until money politics and excessive corporate remuneration are abandoned and the public good again becomes a key objective of Australian leadership.