In The Conversation (7.4.15) Dr Chris Salisbury asks what happens next if the federal government argues that increasing financial pressures impacting on the May budget entitle it to withdraw further from the area of science and infrastructure investment?
‘This potentially leaves a policy space into which the states can move and take more of a lead in supporting innovative research and technological advances.’
He concludes that Canberra’s unsympathetic view of science requires a fresh response from the states:
‘Today’s state governments should not think that the important funding of scientific research must be left solely to their wavering and seemingly unsympathetic counterpart in Canberra.
‘In the absence of conciliatory gestures from the feds, our leading science researchers – and perhaps even university vice-chancellors – may find it more rewarding in the immediate future to seek out a funding olive branch from the states.’