Australian Science Lobby 'Neutered'

TOWNSVILLE, AUSTRALIA—The Australian scientific community is struggling to come to terms with its diminished political influence following the abrupt abolition of the Department of Science as part of a massive restructuring of federal departments after the national election July 11. “The science lobby, such as it is, has been neutered,” commented Ian Lowe of Griffith University, an expert on Australian science policy, who also described “a high level of confusion in the bureaucracy.” The principal worry of analysts such as Lowe is that there will be more emphasis on short-term, utilitarian results from technology at the expense of long-term, less di rected investment in basic science. Following the Labour Party’s victory at the polls, Prime Minister Bob Hawke reorganized the 27 former departments into 16 new “megadepartments” headed by a cabinet-level minister. The Department of Science was split into four fragments absorbed into other ministries; Barry Jones, while retaining the title of minister for science, in effect became a junior minister within the greatly enlarged Ministry of Industry, Technology and Commerce (DITAC). DITAC has taken over responsibility for science policy, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (Australia’s large public sector R&D enterprise, which itself is undergoing a major internal restructuring), the Patents Office and the Australian Institute of Marine Science. The ministry is overseen by Sen. John Button, an influential voice in the Hawke cabinet. These moves apparently are intended to tie the government’s science and technology interests more closely to industrial objectives. The Hawke government had set up a combined Department of Science and Technology when first elected in 1983, but then split off technology the next year. The proposed Australian Research Council (see THE SCIENTIST, April20, p. 7) has been placed under the (also enlarged) Department of Employment, Education and Training (DEET), much to the displeasure of the universities, which have seen education downgraded in the political pecking order. That department also acquired the Anglo-Australian Telescope Board—a move difficult to relate to its title. The Bureau of Meteorology and the Analytical Laboratories have been placed in the Department of Administrative Services, while the Antarctic Division (which runs Australia’s southernmost research bases) has joined a ragtag collection of interests in the Department of Arts, Sport, the Environment and Territories. Academic and research administrators attending the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science (ANZAAS) congress held here last month have been quick to point out anomalies in the restructuring. There was puzzlement tinged with despair among marine researchers here that bureaucratic responsibility for their field has been split, with research grants coming from DEET while the Institute of Marine Science and the Marine Advisory Committee are in DITAC. The institute director, Joe Baker, termed it “unfortunate” that the hard-won identity for marine research grants had been “submerged in an amorphous group of other research interests.” But Baker lays much of the responsibility for the carving up of the science portfolio to scientists themselves, who he said have “failed to communicate to policy-makers the relevance of science in general.” Lowe expects that more resources will have to go toward coordination and management—especially in DITAC, where he sees the values of science and technology policy as inherently different from those of industry and commerce, and in DEET, where the research elements do not sit comfortably with employment and training goals. The harder heads at the ANZAAS congress think that it makes sense to reunite science planning with technology, and that Button may turn out to be a more effective champion for R&D than Jones ever could have been. Pockley covers science policy in Australia.

Australian Science Lobby 'Neutered'

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