We hear a lot about the need for Australia to boost its productivity, but little about the scientific research and development needed to achieve it. Our major political parties need to provide a strategic approach to science that goes beyond the election cycle, writes Brian Schmidt.

As the election campaign wears on, one wonders what the next three and half weeks could possibly bring when the first 10 days of the campaign have brought so little.

The lack of substantive policy discussions thus far has lead to the campaign air being punctuated with bitter disagreements over what the other side might do if elected, rather than any meaningful discussion of each party's plan for Australia.

I, for one, would like to see the two major parties give some effort to laying out a vision for increasing Australia's prosperity, rather than simply worrying about how to get elected. What better place to start than the completely neglected area of science?

While we hear of the need for Australia to boost its productivity as a central theme in this economically charged election, how exactly do the major parties propose to do this?

Yes there are economic reforms that can help, but surely, in the long term, productivity is going to be driven by innovation, which in turn is driven by research.

But research has a 10-to-20-year horizon, whereas the political cycle is only three. Research, especially the early stages, relies almost exclusively on government funding.

Australia spends approximately 2.2 per cent of its GDP on research and development (R&D) - putting us just below the middle of the OECD table.

R&D is far more valuable to the economy than that because of the return on investment. For example, medical research is responsible for our second-largest area of manufactured exports, medicines and medical equipment, just behind aluminium (hardly high value, and hardly growing), and well ahead of the much publicised automotive industry.

But, according to the Chief Scientist, Ian Chubb, we are rapidly going backwards in the fraction of our GDP we put into R&D, when one would think, given the emphasis on increasing our long-term productivity, we should be aiming to boost our efforts.

If Australia is going to thrive in the area of science, it needs a long-term vision, a strategy that has security of funding that goes beyond the election cycle. Such a strategy does not need to spend more - I can live with 2.2 per cent of GDP spent on R&D, if we spend it well. But we seem to be heading in the direction of spending less with our continued level of ineptness.

Much of the science funding in Australia is spent on non-continuing projects - projects that terminate after a fixed period of time. The best/worst example of this was the highly successful National Cooperative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). Rather than the typical, 'fund research infrastructure as part of a political announceable… and we'll figure out what to do with it later' approach, NCRIS developed a whole-of-life-cycle approach to facilities. This was a great program, but with one major flaw. The program terminated in 2011, and after two years on death row, was resurrected for 24 months in this year's budget. This two years of life-support keeps most of our research facilities from being shut down, thereby averting disaster for the sector, but it doesn't allow any sort of long-term planning, and once again means we do not get anything like what we should out of our capital investments.

For example, despite huge demand, the Australian Synchrotron remains under-developed, we are mothballing ocean monitoring equipment in the Indian Ocean despite it just being deployed, and we are soon to have no access to the state-of-the-art telescopes I use to undertake my research. Australia needs NCRIS, it needs it with multi-party support, and it needs on a continuing basis.

While the Liberals have stated that they will not cut medical research, neither the Coalition nor Labour has provided a substantive commitment to science as part of the election or its lead up.

Both major parties would do well to look at the Greens policy announced by Adam Bandt in June.

I fear that, after the election, as has often been the case in the past, science will be left as an afterthought, with funding coming at the last possible moment as a series of a few disjointed new short-term initiatives coupled to the traditional ARC and NHMRC grant programs.

The incoming government needs to have a long-term strategy for investment in science, a clear mission for our research universities, research institutes, and CSIRO, and engender a sense of stability in the sector so that business sees a landscape within which they have the confidence to invest.

Australia can ill afford to once again leave science on the back burner, and have our politicians figure out what to do with it once the deficit is under control.

Science is one of the key things that governments do to ensure the continued prosperity of the country, and it needs to have a strategy and a commitment just like health or education.

The political challenge is that the successes and failures of science programs manifest themselves 10 or 20 years downstream, not in MPs electorates over the following year.

So Mr Abbott and Mr Rudd, surprise us, and openly agree on a multi-partisan approach to science. The political winner will be who ever jumps first, but Australia wins either way - unless political expediency once again trumps the long-term needs of the country.

Brian Schmidt is a Laureate Fellow and Distinguished Professor at The Australian National University's Mount Stromlo Observatory. View his full profile here.

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