Australia is in the bottom seven countries, rated by government spend on research and development as a proportion of GDP
Deep in the 2015 Federal Budget just released is notice that government funding of research will be cut by 7 per cent over the next 12 months, and a further 10 per cent over the next three years – a total of 17 per cent
Singapore is going the other way. It is increasing its research and development spend by 20 per cent over 2011 – 2015 compared to the previous five years.
The government currently spends $9 billion a year on science research. 17 per cent of that is $1.53 billion that will not be spent discovering the next bionic ear, aviation black box, or refrigerator – all invented in Australia.
Instead, the government is going to provide small businesses with $20,000 to spend on large screen TVs, new computers and new cars. All these items will be imported (because we don’t make anything here anymore), which means all that money will go overseas, supporting research over there, while all we do here is support retailers like Harvey Norman.
Crazy logic
Does this make sense? Not to me.
The government says the $20,000 will create jobs for people like coffee baristas. Give me a break. What use is this to the country? Is this short sighted or what?
Australia is in the bottom seven countries, rated by government spend on research and development as a proportion of GDP. Israel is the highest followed by South Korea.
Currently we are ranked 81st out of 143 in a measure of global innovation. This is a long, long way down for one of the most successful economies in the world.
And with no mining boom, who or what is going to fund this country for our kids?
Our Chief scientist, Ian Chubb, is quoted in Bloomberg as writing on his website “I think about the sort of jobs a child in school today might want to do in 10, 20, 50 years. And I wonder, which of those jobs will not require an understanding of science?”
Should we not be giving the $20,000 to teachers to specialise in maths and science? That would be a real investment in our future – and most of the money would stay in the country, paying for local things like food, new homes and transport, creating a multiplier effect.
Now that would be an innovation.
Discussion1 Comment
Chris,
I have searched the budget papers and found no reference to your claimed cut in spending. In fact the Minister Mcfarlane says:
“Minister for Industry and Science Ian Macfarlane said the Government was maintaining its annual investment of around $9 billion in science, research and innovation.”
Can you provide a reference for your claim, quite frankly I don’t believe it (the original Bloomberg article does not reference it either, despite numerous other references in it’s article)
You also claim:
“The government says the $20,000 will create jobs for people like coffee baristas”.
Despite numerous google searches for this statement by the government, I cam find no reference to it, who said this and when? Or was it just made up?
You then claim:
“government is going to provide small businesses with $20,000 to spend on large screen TVs, new computers and new cars”, this is simply not true. The government is providing a tax deduction which as anyone, particularly anyone in business, knows is very different from receiving $20,000 from the government. A mistake made often over recent weeks by anti-government commentary and the Labour Party. To say the money is provided to spend on TV’s etc is just drivel, some of it may be spent on these items, but a lot will also be spent on much needed investment by small business.
Your solution just to give “$20,000 to teachers to specialise in maths and science” is just channeling Labour Party rubbish from their budget reply, where the set out many billions of $ of extra spending and no way to pay for them.
Tom Gannon