HIGH FLYERS THINK TANK

National Research Priorities Strategic Forum
26–27 June 2002

What happens next?
Robin Batterham

Robin Batterham is Chief Scientist of the Commonwealth of Australia and provides advice to the Federal Government on science and innovation matters. He plays a major role in promoting linkages between science, industry and government and helps to ensure public investment in science and technology is properly focused on issues of national priority. He is the Executive Officer of the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council and is currently Chair of the Consultative Panel that is seeking input from the community on national research priorities. The nine Panel members have a broad range of experience and expertise and their task, now coming into its concluding phase, has been to stimulate debate about priorities towards which Australia might choose to focus extra attention. He is a member of the Australian Research Council, the Cooperative Research Centres Committee and the Advisory Panel for the Australian Institute for Commercialisation.

I think a lot has come out in the discussion, and much has been particularly useful. What I would like to do now is just pull out a few key points that I have picked up and that represent the state of play at the moment and how it is going forward.

First of all, just to put it into context: David Strangway was talking this morning about the Canadian experience. I think the Canadian 1,000 New Research Chairs has been pillaging much of Australia’s talent as well as talent from around the world. We are all aware of that. But, overall. I think the Canadian experience is rather a splendid one, and I point to just two things.

First, the comment that it has regenerated a sense of optimism in government, in the public and amongst the R&D community. The second one is that it is very interesting that in their own way they have learnt the vital role of outcome reporting – outcome reporting to the wider public, to the politicians, to the funding bodies and so on. There we have two bits of context that I think it is impossible to ignore, in terms of their experience, a somewhat different path although there are a lot of similarities to where we are at the moment.

Are we talking about priorities or, as Tim Besley would have it, areas of national importance? I think ‘areas of national importance’ has got a lot to commend it, because it does focus the mind. ‘Priorities’ can be a rather divisive debate; nevertheless, we will probably stick with that title for now.  We have a system, a whole innovation system and the R&D that sits behind it, that has had a significant change in direction in the last couple of years, and the question is now what more is going to happen. We are still faced with the fact that the future of Australia rests on its knowledge intensity and how that is integrated into the whole community, and how the whole community is involved by many but not all – nowhere near all. So how do we get it further up on the agenda?

I see national research priorities, or areas of national importance, as one such significant step, along the way – one that might in time generate a lot of positive outcomes, not the least of which might ultimately be more funding in some areas.

Therefore, if you see it in this context that it is part of Australia moving to a more knowledge-intense society then you must say, ‘Look, these areas need three features’ and they’re dead simple. One: to be well recognisable. If you need a sentence to describe it and it is full of jargon words, forget it. They have to be well recognisable, not just by the science and R&D population whom they should and will excite, but also by the wider population. Two: to be adequately resourced, and recognised as being adequately resourced. Whether it is in the popular jargon – well, we’ve got our best brains working on it – or whatever, and I don’t want to push that line too far, I’m not particularly worried. So, well-recognised, well-resourced, and, three: great expectations. There should simply be great expectations that we are going to deliver results and we have outcomes that people will value. I keep talking about outcomes. It is so important.

How quantifiable some of the targets should be, I think becomes a second-order effort. It needs to be doable when you start getting down into some of the more specific plans.

Let me move on. I would hope that out of the process of consultation we do get some bounded suggestions – thematic priorities and there might be some structural, which is much more the Canadian style – that point to wider vision. I don’t think we have to wait, nor should we, until the wider vision is fully articulated. One of the hallmarks of Australian life is that we have never, as Australians, been too good at posting ‘national visions’. Our national vision is almost not to have a national vision. The last attempt that I am aware of was spaghetti-and-meatballed out of existence, and as you go back, the track record is not so good. Nevertheless, at the top end, these themes should be visionary, they should be something that it is easy to subscribe to. At the lower end they should have a lot of hooks, of areas that can be hung on to them, hooks that cover the social sciences and humanities. They are the fortunate few: as the recipients of 8 per cent or so of Australia’s funding, they get the chance to double-dip in this process. Not only are they involved in this round, because they will inevitably contribute to some of the thematic priorities, but they get their own separate crack at it next year. 

I would like to move on to say something about the process from here on.

From my perspective, what we are involved in at the moment is the stage that involves a Consultative Panel, or two parts of a Consultative Panel, that have been doing the length-and-breadth-of-the-country consultations.  This focused discussion runs parallel, and I thank the Academies for pulling it together.

So how do the various priority setting schemes, because that is how the CSIRO Flagship Projects and the Rural R&D Corporations, with their strategic plans and a host of others all fit in to this – or how does this fit in to them? You have heard in some detail of the NHMRC and the CSIRO processes. Well, this is essentially an across-government exercise, targeting areas where we can secure added focus and added outcomes by moving across the silos. That is, in and of itself, what it is about. It is not about saying one particular area is so important, everybody should down tools and work on that. It is picking areas where there is the possibility of whole-of-government approach generating more worthwhile outcomes for Australia than what we have at the moment with a silo-type approach. I would hope that in so doing, fairly obviously, it is going to build on strengths, albeit identifying some areas where structurally we need to make some changes. So it may well have quite some regional focus in some cases. It is undoubtedly going to leave in place the essential base which supports the more thematic areas. It would be a nonsense to put all the eggs into a series of thematic priorities by removing the resources from the more basic areas. That is clear.

It will be looking for co-investments with the States. I understand you heard some figures yesterday on the relative input of states into R&D, versus the Commonwealth versus industry. The figures I am broadly familiar with are that there is about $0.8 billion per annum that the States put in, the vast majority of which is into the agricultural, primary industries, as opposed to $5 billion which the Commonwealth puts in and a similar amount which private industry spends. So State-Commonwealth co-investment opportunities are important, that is fairly clear. We have had some good models, and it is interesting how well they have grown over the last three years or so that I have been observing it closely. Whether it is through MNRFs or CRCs or special centres of excellence or the Plant Functio