Every year, for the last 15 years, a swarm of working scientists have descended on Canberra to meet with parliamentarians, learn how policy development works and network with each other.
This year, AMSI sent Simi Henderson and I, to join Aidan Sims (Wollongong), Kevin Larkin (Griffith), Jacob Humphries, John Henstridge and Joshua Ross (Adelaide) as representatives for the mathematics community.
The Science meets Parliament program involves a day of workshops, with talks by lobbyists, public servants and journalists, followed by a day at parliament house, where we, the scientists, meet with the politicians.
Science seems in a precarious place at the moment. Our research infrastructure has been threatened with the loss of funding (through NCRIS), and the Future Fellowship program has been shelved. Reform of funding for higher education is still unresolved. On the positive side, we again have a Minister for Industry and Science, Ian Macfarlane, with Karen Andrews serving as the parliamentary secretary for science.
Minister Macfarlane challenged the participants to create better links with industry, noting that we came last in an OECD survey on the rate of collaboration between business and research organisations. Labor Senator Kim Carr gave a wide ranging and frank speech, which had a focus on higher education. He made the point that consultation should go beyond the small group of vice-chancellors and include the whole university community.
Other notable speakers were the opposition leader Bill Shorten, Liberal MP Dennis Jensen (a former CSIRO scientist) and Greens MP Adam Bandt, who made a witty speech that included a calculus joke.
As mathematicians, we were advocating for the improvment of maths education. Around 40% of Year 7 to 10 maths classes do not have a qualified maths teacher. Meanwhile, maths enrolments in Year 12 have decreased by 34% over the last 20 years: both these trends are reinforcing each other.
The politicians we spoke to were very receptive to this message, and we are hopeful of change.
We were particularly heartened by Chief Scientist Professor Ian Chubb’s report ‘The Importance of Advanced Physical and Mathematical Sciences to the Australian Economy.’ He highlighted the importance of basic research, and estimates that the physical and mathematical sciences bring about $145 billion to the Australian economy directly (and more indirectly).
Other scientists came to advocate policy responses related to their research: the climate scientists were particularly articulate about the challenges of communicating when your results themselves are seen as political.
Julie Clutterbuck
ARC Future Fellow: Curvature flows and spectral estimates
Senior Lecturer, School of Mathematical Sciences, Monash University
View the AMSI Discipline Profile discussed with politicians here
Photo (left to right): Julie Clutterbuck (AMSI), Kevin Larkin (MERGA), Simi Henderson (AMSI), Jacob Humphries (SSAI), Richard Marles MP, John Henstridge (SSAI), Aidan Sims (AustMS), Joshua Ross (AustMS)