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Transcript
NATIONAL PRESS CLUB ADDRESS,
CANBERRA
10 August 2005
E&OE:
DR NELSON:
Thanks very much. Thanks Ken.
Thank you very much Ken for your presidency of the Club and the invitation to address it once again.
I'd also like to acknowledge Ian Carmody, the Chairman of Australian Science Festival; Mary Anne Waldron, the Executive Director; Lisa Paul, the Secretary of my Department; my friend, my colleague, the indefatigable Member for Mackellar, the Hon. Bronwyn Bishop; Brendan Smyth, the Leader of the Opposition here in the ACT; Luke and Katie who've come from Pasadena High School – I used to ride my pushbike past it every day when I went to Flinders University – and to all of you that are here from Australia's scientific, research and education communities, thank you very much for everything that you do every single day.
I'd firstly recognise the Ngunnawal traditional Aboriginal people of course upon whose land the Press Club in Canberra has been built.
And I promised also my Uncle, a fellow called Geoff Beecroft who's a great bloke, he lives in Adelaide, who's suffering a bit at the moment, that I'd say g’day to him from the National Press Club. So g’day Geoff. He said to me at the weekend, he said, if I go into town with you, that's in Launceston, he said, can you walk a bit in front of me? And I said, why? And he said, well I think it's for my protection. So...
[Laughter]
This week we commence Australian Science Week and it's in fact the largest event which is conducted across Australia annually.
There will be around seven hundred events formally associated with Australian Science Week through those nine days and the Australian Science Festival, which Ian directs here in the ACT, will oversee directly and indirectly about ninety-two of those events.
My Department has invested $1.3 million in this exercise along with the CSIRO. I also thank the ABC, the Australian Science Teachers' Association and all of those men and women in our schools, universities, our science researchers, and people in the media who work so hard to make Australian Science Week and the Australian Science Festival what it is.
And I notice that amongst the events here in Canberra, we'll have Science in the Pub at the King O'Malley Hotel at 4:30pm on the 21st of August, and the debate is about the science of siblings and I'll leave you to reflect on what that might mean.
We've also got the Amazing Science Exhibition at the Convention Centre here in Canberra and there will also be a debate conducted on the 16th of August at the Bradman Centre on whether or not Australia should embrace in part a nuclear fuelled power future.
Science is many things I suppose. It's about knowledge; it’s about curiosity, intellectual rigour and the testing of evidence. But it's also, for those of us perhaps who are not scientists, also about hope and about trust.
Hope is arguably the most fragile, yet powerful of human emotions and in many ways it drives our faith and our confidence in enhancing the human condition and improving the lives of all of us, but more importantly those of the next generation.
But it's also about trust. Trust from those of us who are not perhaps as scientifically literate as many of you. Trust in terms of investing in you and your work our money and the hard earned taxes which Australians gladly pay to invest in science and research. But also we place into your hands our future - our technological, economic future – but also in the process impart our humanity.
We, as I've said here at the Press Club before, are a country that has achieved much, well beyond our numbers. But the reality is that as 20 million people we are still 0.3% of the world's population. We are less than 2% of global gross domestic product and less than 4% of that of the United States of America, and we are just over 6% of the combined GDP of APEC.
The kind of Australia in which my children are going to be living when they are “half dead” if you like, is going to be determined by our ability to learn how to learn. And it's about developing ideas and particularly those that are rooted in science and technology. Not just applied science but also in humanities and social science, and in no small way the agrarian and land intensive industries, particularly minerals, resources and exploration and mining and agriculture. Their sustainability is being driven by information, communication technology, by image transfer processing, by ICT and increasingly also by robotics.
The other reality that we all face is, for those of you with empty lives that may have read the Productivity Commission Report that was released just before Christmas last year, you no doubt noted that its forecast that, all things being equal, that over the next forty years we will have a 10% contraction in labour market participation in Australia; that in the absence of any other changes in order to cover the health and welfare costs of ageing, Australia will either have to increase its taxes by 23% – an unconscionable thought – or alternatively we are going to face a 7% gross domestic product fiscal gap. In other words, the gap between the amount of money we're expected to spend and the amount of revenues that we face. And as the Treasurer and others have commented, one of the three variables is productivity, and the productivity rate that we averaged over the last decade of 2.05%. If we can sustain that, and that's what industrial relations reform is about – it's not about this year or next year, it's about making sure that a decade from now that we can continue to enjoy high rates of economic growth and a low inflation environment. But so too, driving that productivity rate is going to be very much in the hands of Australia's scientists and researchers.
I read a book about eighteen months ago by a fellow called Graeme Davison, who's the Professor of History at Monash University and he made the observation, it's called The Uses and Abuses of Australian History, and he made the observation that ethical and responsible citizenship relies on all young people being imbued with the imaginative capacity to see the world through the eyes of other human beings – not just those in our own country, but those in other parts of the world.
I would add to it two other things that we're also focused on in my portfolio.
The first is character, and on the national values framework, which we have sent to every school in the country to be displayed, I placed under those nine key values that should drive education the George Eliott quote that “character is destiny”.
Because as Benjamin Franklin observed, in order for us to enjoy freedoms and be a civil society, it requires us to be virtuous, to have a deeply engrained moral compass in terms of what is right and wrong, and when individuals lose sight of that governments respond by moving to legislate, and you might reflect on that in the context of what's happening in our world.
But the third thing in my view which drives ethical and responsible citizenship is scientific literacy. There is a grave risk for us in living in a country that is increasingly dependent on technology and science where many of us, including myself, struggle with our own levels of scientific literacy. And I think in 1916, J.J. Thomson, who of course discovered the electron a century ago, basically challenged us to embrace a revolution in our understanding of science and technology to shape the nation in which we live.
And so too for us, it's important – I say this to you Ken and your colleagues here at the National Press Club, that the media and those who work within it play an extremely important role in seeing that we who are less scientifically literate have scratched away the surface to find the truth in an understandable way in relation to science. And what Norman Swan did in 1987 in uncovering the fraudulent research of William McBride did an enormous service to this country. Similarly the work of Rachel Nowak and Susan Williamson when they lifted that work of Helen McConnell out of the Journal of Urology in 1998 in challenging the medical establishment about the neuroanatomy of a sensitive part of the female anatomy.
The role of the media in those and so many other areas, and I'd add to that the management of low level and intermediate level nuclear waste – where it will be in the Northern Territory – is absolutely fundamental to us living in a stable society.
The biggest threat to our economic social and cultural development is what I think Socrates describes as the root of all evil, and that is ignorance. And all of us have a responsibility to see that we overcome it, particularly in the area of science.
One of the concerns that we have, and I certainly have, is about the teaching of science in Australian schools.
We have performed out of all proportion to our numbers in this country. We currently publish 2.9% of the world's scientific publications, it's 5% in geosciences and plant and animal sciences. Our citation rates are 4.2% and we're rated in the top ten.
We've had seventeen Nobel Prize winners in Science and we've got just over sixty Fellows of the Royal Society.
But in order for us to see that the next generation is equipped with world class scientists, we've got to go to the heart of it, which in my opinion is the teaching of science in schools.
John Cornforth, who was one of those Nobel Prize winners, when he got up in 1975 to receive the honour paid tribute in part to a man who is not a household name in this country but ought to be. And if we were a different country, with slightly different emphases, he would be. And that's a fellow called Lenny Basser who taught the honours chemistry class at Sydney Boys High School for thirty-one years. And Cornforth said of Len Basser – and by the way Basser taught what are currently seven Fellows of the Royal Society, 1% of all of its Fellows, plus a Nobel Prize winner – and Cornforth said, ‘in my opinion Lenny Basser's greatest gift to his students was an understanding that science is a quintessentially important cultural activity’. He said, ‘I don't remember a single chemical fact that he taught me but I know I wouldn't be the scientist that I am today without him’. And every single day in this country our men and women in our schools, who in spite of governments, not because of them, are doing the very best that they can to teach our children to learn how to learn in the field of science.
And so too Sir Mark Oliphant, reflecting on his own successes he said, ‘I was lucky’. He said, ‘I was lucky that I had a great teacher back in Adelaide, Dr Roy Burton, who taught me the exhilaration of even only small discoveries in the field of physics’.
I've got to say to Australian parents that it is still unfortunately a question of luck in many ways as to whether our children are going to be taught by inspiring teachers and that's one of the many things that we are determined to change.
I announced recently a $39 million programme – called Australian Schools Innovation in Science and Technology and Mathematics – to bring schools and their teachers to work hand in glove with science-based and technology-based small and medium sized industries and I announced the first 103 clusters very recently involving 635 schools.
We will also be funding 1,300 early career scientists to come and work as mentors in Australian schools to help and work hand in glove with our teachers to inspire our students in terms of science.
Whilst in the last four years we've had a 12% increase in the number of students undertaking science programmes in Australian universities, over the last twelve years we've had a significant decline in the proportion that are doing science subjects in Year 12. We've dropped from 35% to 26% of Year 12 students doing Biology for example from 1990 to 2002, and for Physics we've dropped disturbingly from 21% to 17%.
Now one of the many things that I've got going which, by the way, if I haven't upset, offended or alienated anybody here today or anyone watching it, I'll just about pick you up. Ken mentioned that I've got a few things on the agenda – well, one of them is we are systematically working through a national inquiry into the training of teachers.
This is not a criticism of teachers. Apart from us as parents, it is teachers who most inform and influence the lives of our children and the sort of adults they will become.
In fact for too many young Australians the only chance they have, the only chance, is what happens in a classroom when they turn up at school.
Professor Garth Gaudry and the International Centre for Education in Mathematics, which we also funded and established two years ago, recently did some research for me in looking at the training of mathematics for those who are training to be primary school teachers. Of the thirty-one education faculties in this country, four require any Year 12 mathematics to have been done by a student who is going into primary school teaching training. Only another eight require any Year 11 mathematics to have been done, and nineteen require no mathematics whatsoever, and only one of those thirty-one faculties has any kind of exit examination for those who are training to be primary school teachers before they leave.
Professor Garth Gaudry and Professor Peter Taylor, also from the Australian Mathematics Institute, simultaneously wrote to me to tell me that, in their opinion, students who study in Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia are seriously disadvantaged by having seven years of primary school. For two reasons they argue this to me. The first is that they are spending an extra year with primary school teachers who are frequently having difficulty with a number of the mathematical concepts that they are responsible for teaching, and secondly that those students have one less year in high school to be exposed to the challenging complexities of the discipline of mathematics.
I'm also informed that students who perform very well in Year 12 in Queensland in mathematics, struggle in first year science and mathematical programmes in New South Wales universities. This is not an assertion that I'm making, it's information that has been put to me by scientists and mathematicians themselves and I intend to do something about it.
One of the many things that we're working on is we put $30 million of your money, your money, into establishing a national institute for quality teaching and school leadership to develop and drive national performance benchmarks for principals and for teachers.
One of its tasks is to work with the deans of education in building an accreditation model for our education faculties.
One of the other things that I am determined to oversee is to develop a programme where our science teachers, not just our science teachers but all teachers who are considered by their own peers to be outstanding, should be offered and have university appointments. So that for example, why can't we have teachers in Australia who spend three, three and a half days a week teaching in a school and then another day or a day and a half researching and teaching the next generation of teachers?
That would firstly raise the respect and the esteem this country has for teaching as a profession. We should have associate professors of education or mathematics or science working in schools – people like Lenny Basser.
And so too, it would also bring a much more practical hands-on approach to teacher training which in my opinion has become a quasi-sociology programme.
That's a sweeping generalisation which does not, nor should not, apply to all education faculties. But I must say I am concerned. And there should at the very least be an independently set and assessed exit exam for those who are leaving education faculties in basic mathematics and science before those young men, and perhaps even mature age men and women, go into classrooms to inspire our children.
The other thing that, by the way, I've done which I think is extremely important – this is a magazine and it's called Cosmos and it’s interesting. I've got an army of people working in my office, wonderful people. A couple of the people who work in my office who work so diligently to get everything ready for me said to me, that is a brilliant magazine's that’s been sent to you, Brendan, it's called Cosmos. This is a scientific magazine which is the most inspiring, readable, understandable publication in science that I have seen. I am sending two copies to every science teacher in the country in October, hopefully so that they can also see how inspiring it is and perhaps consider a subscription to it. I hasten to add I have no relationship with the publishers or anybody else but...
The other thing that I would like to say something about is, given it's Australian Science Week – I mentioned that there will be a debate in Australian Science Week about whether or not nuclear power should be an option for Australia's future?
There are a numbers of realities that we as human beings and Australians we face.
The International Energy Agency, for example, estimates that by 2050, we will have to displace 26 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions to bring the world back to its pre-industrial era. Now in plain language that's almost 8,000 emission free coal-fired powered 500 megawatt power stations.
Australians today, on a per capita basis, consume almost four times the world average of energy. We are 1.7 times that of Western Europe and it's estimated that by 2050, on current trends, our energy consumption per capita will be three times what it is today.
In order for us to constrain greenhouse gas emissions – from Australia that is – by 50%, we would have to have sixty coal-fired power stations which are emission free, or 57,000 windmill turbines. Now the reality is throughout the world today there are 439 operational nuclear power stations in thirty-one countries.
There are twenty-five which are in construction. There are thirty-nine that are proposed and there are another seventy-three that are planned.
We currently have one-third approximately of the world's uranium. We seem, notwithstanding the reservations of some, to be quite enthusiastic about digging it out of the ground and exporting it to countries for a whole range of industrial energy generation and medical purposes.
The reality in my view is that we owe it to our future to consider all of our options.
Yes, we are investing heavily in the Co-operative Research Centre for CO2 Emissions. Yes,
we're working with the US Department of Energy, particularly in Texas in researching geosequestration of CO2. Yes, we are also investing in a major National Research Facility
and co-operating with the International Thermonuclear Fusion Reactor. We've also invested $1.8 billion in renewable fuels; $700 million announced last year for all sorts of technologies to apply to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and bringing solar energy to the market and a whole range of things.
We're working very closely with International Energy Agency in all of those fields that are about clean energies.
But in my opinion we owe it to our future to dispassionately examine the extent to which economically, environmentally and culturally we might reasonably consider nuclear power as an option for our future.
The Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Scientific and Technological and Engineering Societies have written to me, Jim Peacock and John Zillman respectively, proposing that their two Academies, with the Academies of Humanities and Social Science, might reasonably and scientifically dispassionately look at every part of this to, if you like, conduct a debate nationally – to which all of us might contribute – to look at the mining, the exploration, the transport, the engineering and safety or otherwise of nuclear power stations, what the consequences are for other energy sources in Australia. And there is absolutely no doubt that coal will continue to drive most of our energy sources for the foreseeable future. But in my opinion, the Learned Academies are an ideal vehicle for us to consider it.
The Government, of which I am a member, currently does not have a particular position on this. Personally, I think we should, notwithstanding the hysteria that can be generated by this issue, because the reality is that our world is warming. For a million years CO2 levels were two hundred to three hundred parts per million. In the space of 150 years it's gone to 380.
I think those that say that human activity is the cause of it have yet to prove their case, but the evidence that human activity is contributing to it, in my opinion, is approaching overwhelming. Our generation needs to start now and it may well be that the economics, the environmental issues, the safety issues and all of those things don't add up for Australia, but so be it. But surely, we need to take it from the political process and place it in the hands of our applied scientists and also our humanists to see whether it is something that might play a role in our future.
In my opinion, it borders on hypocrisy for us to enthusiastically dig the stuff out of the ground, send it to other countries for their power generation and yet here we are, a sparsely populated, large continent, which is geologically stable, possessed with some of the brightest, most efficient scientists and researchers in the world capable of remarkable engineering feats, and it's time that I think that we had a look at it.
So, thank you very much, Ken and I'd be very happy to take...
That's the other thing I've got to do.
Ian Carmody, the Chairman of the Australian Science Festival will be beside himself, because I'm actually supposed to launch the Australian Science Festival.
[Laughter]
So, it's my honour. Now Katie is coming up from Pasadena...
So Katie Delbridge from Pasadena High School, and I'm presenting Katie with the Australian Science Festival poster, and I'd like to also recognise and thank ACTEW AGL for its sponsorship and support of it. Thank you very, very much also to the National Australia Bank and all of the sponsors and I know that it will be displayed with pride at Pasadena. So it is my honour to give this to you Katie and also to officially launch the Australian Science Festival here for the ACT.
CHAIR:
And apart from that, Dr Nelson has also launched question time, and the first one of those today is from Michael Brissenden.
QUESTION:
Dr Nelson, Michael Brissenden ABC Television. I'd love to ask you a science question but I'm sure you'll indulge me. Your other portfolio, education, of course you've been having a few problems pushing through the VSU legislation with your Coalition partners the Nationals. I just wondered if you could reflect on what's been happening lately and whether you think Barnaby Joyce particularly is ruining what would otherwise be an unprecedented political opportunity for your side of politics at the moment?
DR NELSON:
Well thanks Michael. You couldn't ask me about abortion or something could you? Something easy?
[Laughter]
I, firstly from our point of view, we believe very strongly, particularly this in the twenty-first century, that students should be free to choose whether or not they will join a student union, guild or association when they go to a campus, and universities should apply their considerable marketing skills to convincing students as to the benefits of joining and membership. As far as the legislation is concerned, could I just say to you, I've faced more difficult challenges in the past and been able to succeed at them. I think the views and concerns and reservations that are held by a range of people, whilst I disagree with them, are legitimate and I've had in fact the opportunity now to have several conversations and meetings with a number of my Senate colleagues, including Senator Joyce, and I've, for what it's worth, I've found him quite a reasonably engaging person. So, we'll see what happens. But, it's extremely important.
Australians should realise that the universities last year had $12.4 billion in total revenues available to them. $170 million was forcibly appropriated from students when they walked in the gates of the university to get an education. A significant number of those students don't even ever set foot on the campus because they're distance education students and we certainly believe and believe very strongly that the universities, whilst to varying degrees facing challenges in adaptation, will certainly be able to adjust to an environment where students will make decisions about whether they're going to join the guild, the union, the association, whether it's the hockey club, the rugby club, the judo club, the toga lovers' club, or whatever they choose to join. I encourage students to join, but under no circumstances do we think that they should be forced.
CHAIR:
Next question's from Darren Barnett.
QUESTION:
Dr Nelson, Darren Barnett from AAP. Recent figures suggest there's been a 25% increase in the number of courses which charge over $100,000 in up-front fees. Many of them are science courses. And, just wondering whether that alarms you, particularly considering the FEE-HELP cap is set at $50,000 and whether that may disadvantage some students from being able to participate?
DR NELSON:
Well thanks very much Darren. You're referring of course to the full fee paying places which are in addition to all of the HECS places, the Government funded places that there are available throughout Australia. As a consequence of the reforms that went through the parliament in 2003, we have increased, increased the Government HECS funded places throughout Australia by 39,000 over the next five years. We also take the view though that Australians should have no less right – if they're academically eligible to pay full fees for the degree programme they want to do – no less right than an international student. When you say that a number of those degree programmes that are over a hundred thousand dollars are science-based, I mean we're talking about dentistry, veterinary science, medicine. I saw one that was combined law and medicine. I know how much doctors earn. I know how much, I think I know how much lawyers earn. Imagine if you combined the two. But, so, for the first time, you remind me we have a loan scheme which is available to those students. It's currently capped at fifty thousand dollars. It runs like HECS although there's a flat administration charge available to it. I'm on the public record as believing that the level of that FEE-HELP loan, that $50,000 should increase. But that's a matter for the Government. I'll keep trying to persuade my colleagues to that view, but we're in a crazy situation where the Australian Labor Party, for example, its policy is to ban, ban Australians from paying full fees in Australian universities. So if you get 99.4 and you don't get into combined law/medicine, you are still academically eligible for doing it. Apparently you can go overseas and pay full fees but you're not allowed to do it in Australia. The absurdity of their position is that they have voted to support a loan scheme, we called OVERSEAS FEE-HELP, which will be available to Australians to go and study medicine at the Monash Campus in Malaysia but the same students under a Labor Government will not be able to study medicine at Monash in Melbourne. So try and work that out.
If the Government was cutting HECS places and saying to Australians that they should then pay full fees, that would be unconscionable, and I would be joining the demonstrations against myself if you could imagine such a thing. Instead, we're here with the ABC, it's a free to air television station. If you like you've got 2, 7, 9 and 10. We're giving everybody an extra HECS place, imagine another free to air channel – not that I'm advocating that – but Australians are familiar with all of that, but they also know that you can go and get Foxtel or Austar, that's your choice. If you want to pay for it, you can. And if you consider them full fee paying places, oh, by the way we're going to give you a loan to help you pay for it. Now, in my world, that's all about choice and opening up opportunity, and that loan scheme has resulted in an increased demand for places in private higher education institutions in Australia from 10 to 50% in one year because kids from poorer and lower middle income families for the first time don't have to pay up front fees to get into those places because the Government is giving them a loan that they can only ever have to pay back if and when they're working. So, I feel very strongly about that.
CHAIR:
Next question's from Samantha Maiden.
QUESTION:
Dr Nelson, Samantha Maiden from The Australian. When journalists at Parliament House were being briefed yesterday on perhaps a slightly more parental guidance version of the party room – it wasn't quite the Bill Heffernan and Barnaby director's cut – you were of course next door in the committee room immediately adjacent to where we were, talking to your National Party colleagues about trying to reach an agreement on VSU. I was wondering if you could tell us first of all whether you accept their proposition that regional campuses will be worse off if voluntary student unionism is introduced? And whatever your answer to that question is, why should taxpayers be forced to pay additional funds to regional campuses to pick up the tab for what you're saying students should no longer be forced to, as of course they could be forced to under these plans the Nationals are proposing to increase grants to regional campuses as compensation?
DR NELSON:
Well certainly, firstly, I don't accept that regional universities are going to be worse off. They're certainly going to face challenges because instead of having a flat tax, I mean, the student union fee is a flat tax. It's the only fee you've got to pay up-front. The wealthiest student pays exactly the same as the poorest students. I've been lectured for three and a half years about the evils of up-front fees and how they can discourage people from going to university. The same people lecturing me that are out there protesting today are desperately clinging to the notion that this flat tax should continue. The challenge that will face the universities is to think how are they going to persuade students to part with their hard-earned money for services that they think should be provided on campus, and also we are living in a society where there are many small businesses who would be more than happy to have the opportunity to offers of a variety of services to students and staff in university campuses. The fundamental threshold question here is, do you believe in choice? Do you believe that people should be free to choose whether or not they want to join the union or not; whether they want to join the rugby club or, as I say, the toga club or anything else? In terms of, do I think there should be a transference of the costs across to taxpayers? In a general, sense I don't.
But could I also say to you, that as a part of the $11 billion reforms to higher education, we are now putting in an additional $28 million into regional universities and campuses to recognise the fact that they face different challenges from the large, largely sandstone universities and research intensive universities in the cities and those people, you know, there needs to be an understanding here that right throughout this country, there are people who are paying union fees who can barely afford to do it, who don't even physically attend the university, who neither want nor consume the services they've got, and everyone seems to forget that instead of them forcibly paying between $200 and $590, that they will actually have that money in their own pocket to decide what they want to spend it on. And I'm very happy to work with the universities, very happy to work with them, in helping them to market the benefits of joining a whole variety of things on campus.
I'm also very happy, within the programmes I currently have available to me, to make resources and people with significant accounting and financial management expertise available to the universities to help them adjust financially to the new world of actually having to market things to their customers – otherwise known as students – instead of basically forcing $500 out of their pocket and saying, ‘well pay it or get out of here’, because that's what happens at the moment. And I've said to some of these people who are telling me about the virtues of young blokes studying to be doctors whilst they're getting a scholarship, free accommodation and a part-time job, you know by virtue of the student union fee. I've said, just tell me one thing. Why should a single mother with two children who's studying to be a nurse be subsidising the young bloke studying to be a doctor who's on a rugby scholarship? When you can answer that come back to me.
CHAIR:
Next question's from Stephanie Peatling.
QUESTION:
...Dr Nelson, Stephanie Peatling from The Sydney Morning Herald. If we can go back to a more slightly science focused area. But the slightly more contentious one of nuclear power. You mentioned the fifty year prognosis for getting the Earth back to its pre-industrial levels of greenhouse gas emissions and then you talked about a domestic nuclear power generation programme in Australia. Do you see that happening within your lifetime, and what needs to happen for that to occur?
DR NELSON:
Well I, I'll be forty-seven next week. When I turned forty-five my daughter thought I was half dead, so if you assumed that I would live to be ninety – the nature of my current work is such that I think it's going to affect my life expectancy adversely...
[Laughter]
...but in my lifetime, yes, I think it's likely to. We don't know what we don't know, and the future's going to be driven not by what we know but what we don't. And as best as I suppose any of us can look at it, I would think that within that half century or thereabouts, that these kind of changes are going to be forced on us. There are environmental deadlines that are bearing down on us. Our world and humanity has lived on environmental capital for a long time. It's time we started living on interest.
CHAIR:
David Wroe.
QUESTION:
David Wroe from The Age Dr Nelson. In the spirit of your speech I'd like to ask you about teaching science in schools.
DR NELSON:
Thanks mate.
QUESTION CONT'D:
Don't thank me yet.
[Laughter]
DR NELSON:
That's alright.
QUESTION CONT'D:
Specifically I'd like to ask you about the concept of intelligent design which is an idea that's been raging in the States for some time and is now being promoted here in Australia by a group called Campus Crusade for Christ, I think they're called, who I understand have been in touch with your office. Do you see intelligent design as a valid alternative to the theory of evolution? And do you think it should be taught in Australian classrooms?
DR NELSON:
Okay. Firstly I have actually met proponents of intelligent design and I've also seen the DVD. Do I think it should be a replacement for teaching the origins of mankind in a scientific sense? I most certainly don't think that it should be at all. In fact I would be quite concerned if it were to replace it. Do I think the parents in schools should have the opportunity, if they wish to, for students also to be exposed to this and to be taught about it? Yes, I think that's fine. I mean as far as I'm concerned students can be taught and should be taught the basic science in terms of the evolution of man, but if schools also want to present students with intelligent design, I don't have any difficulty with that. But I most certainly would have a lot of concerns if they were replacing science as we understand it in terms of evolution with that alone. I mean it's like the VSU – it's like a whole range of things; the fee payers, the VSU – it's about choice, reasonable choice. And there are something like a million children and their parents who've already exercised that choice and they've gone to a whole variety of schools for a lot of reasons and this is one of them. So, thanks David.
CHAIR:
Sophie Morris
QUESTION:
Sophie Morris from The Financial Review, Dr Nelson. When you were first considering or when you were first talking about the VSU legislation, I think it was in an interview with the ABC last November, you said that you didn't see or have any problem with the idea of having universities having a services fee as long as it wasn't used for political purposes. What changed your mind? What influenced your choice to go for the more far reaching changes? Was this the strident views of your party room?
DR NELSON:
Oh hardly. We have presented this... The legislation in essentially its current form has been presented on two previous occasions. It was in the parliament in fact when the parliament was prorogued. Every single Liberal and National Party member and candidate was elected on the basis of implementing voluntary student unionism in its current form although we've made some minor modifications to it. After the election, and realising that the Government had a Senate majority, and then before proceeding with it to finality, I put it to my colleagues that there were a number of options which were being considered or which have been, if you like, tried or promoted by various people. One of those, if you like, is what is known as the Victorian model. So I said to them, to my own colleagues that is, I said, okay we have voluntary student unionism which we believe in. There are some others amongst us who perhaps might have some attraction to the Victorian model. I, in fact, said to the Vice Chancellors’ Committee, I said you will need to convince my colleagues before they'll even consider that there is a water tight way of confining some compulsory level. When those options were reconsidered by my colleagues they overwhelmingly said, no, we want freedom of choice, and I must say that that is a view that I support. Freedom of choice; that any compulsory level denies that freedom.
CHAIR:
Chris Johnson.
QUESTION:
Chris Johnson from The Western Australian, Minister. Are you aware of the practice that has taken hold in the British education system where parents are provided online to quite extraordinary information about their schools? In addition to the disciplinary record of students, things like the ethnic make up of schools and even how many students are getting free lunches, and would you advocate that kind of information being provided to Australian parents?
DR NELSON:
Well I certainly wouldn't want to go that far. We have put conditions on school funding because, for the first time, before handing money over to governments and non-government school providers, we've said that certain conditions must be met, and one of them is that the performance of the school actually has to be made available to the parents. Too many parents in this country are forced to choose a school on the basis of the colour of the uniforms, the tidiness of the grounds. When what really counts is what happens in the classroom. So as a condition of funding, all schools will make available the following information in at least two of six ways: literacy and numeracy performance in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9, and how that compares with last year; medium Year 10 and Year 12 results; career leaver destinations, what proportion of students went to university, TAFE, got a job, did an apprenticeship; teacher attendance. Not one, two State Ministers said to me, ‘What has a teacher attending school got to do with the education of children?’
[Laughter]
They will also publish the qualifications of the teachers, their participation in their ongoing professional learning, and how much money is spent at the school level on that teacher training. They will also publish the value added – the extent to which this school adds educational value to the children within it compared to the average in a similar cohort. And the other thing, which as West Australians you know especially we are determined to drive, is plain language reporting to parents – A, B, C, D or E and then into which quartile in each subject does your child fall. And Mark Latham has and had many faults, but when he delivered his assessment of his Labor colleagues it was in plain language. Because he knew the average Australian would understand what A grade something or other might mean.
[Laughter]
CHAIR:
Simon Gross.
QUESTION:
Simon Gross, Dr Nelson, I'm here as a freelancer today. You've flagged this inquiry or review of nuclear power in Australia by the Learned Academies. At an earlier time there'd have been someone between you and the Learned Academies to run that kind of inquiry and that would have been the Chief Scientist of Australia. But we're now into our third month without a Chief Scientist of Australia. Why have you allowed this discontinuity to occur? When do you think you'll have someone appointed? And did you at all consider making it a full-time position?
DR NELSON:
Thanks Simon. Well firstly we are actively in the process, as we speak here today, of not only my Department, but we've engaged some professionals to help us find the right person. It's more important we get it right than actually sort of rush into it, and we've got a few people that we're looking very closely at at the moment. We want someone with eminence. We need also someone who can straddle the scientific and the commercial world and someone of course who is able to communicate effectively in plain language to the everyday person. And there's not a lot of them around, but we're determined to get it right. Having said that, I do obviously take advice not just from the Learned Academies but also the recently retired Chief Scientist, Dr Robin Batterham, whom I hold in highest regard.
As far as a full-time position, we've looked at everything and the responsibilities that are involved, and we think that it's a part-time position. We think it's important that we have somebody that is still engaged in research and the day-to-day work of science as much as providing advice to government in a policy sense, and the reason why the Chief Scientist position in the United Kingdom is a full-time one is because that Chief Scientist's office undertakes the tasks and responsibilities and then obviously accumulates the staffing resources that are currently held within my Department here in Australia. So, in fact I think you'll find that most people who understand that, understand the benefits of having it being a part-time position. I can assure you it's got nothing to do with costs, or any of that sort of business, and in terms of when the new Chief Scientist is appointed, I would expect that person will in fact be overseeing, if the Government does agree to a dispassionate analysis of the nuclear power option and everything that that entails, then I would expect the Chief Scientist to be overseeing that side of it. Not too late to apply mate.
CHAIR:
Thank you Dr Nelson. This is a parliamentary sitting day so we only have a very limited amount of time left so our last question today goes to Luke Davies from the Pasadena High School, South Australia.
QUESTION:
I'm Luke Davies from Pasadena High School. Minister Nelson, we believe that there may be an international conference happening in Adelaide on climate change and perhaps Condoleezza Rice will be attending. Minister, if this occurs, are there any leading edge technologies in renewable energy that we can showcase at this conference?
DR NELSON:
Well, thanks Luke. In fact it's a credit to the three Ministers involved, Ministers Downer, McFarlane and Campbell, that we've been able to secure this. This is one way forward, not just for us joining the United States and China and India and South Korea and Japan and the other countries involved, but it is, as you say, an opportunity for us to also highlight the things we're doing. The simple answer is yes we do have a lot. We invested a lot in, as I mentioned in my address, in biofuels, renewable energy. We've got science and applications, for example, in electricity storage in programmes to support commercialising solar power for example. We announced last year half a billion dollars of money to support research and technologies through reduced greenhouse emissions from the different kinds of energy that we use in Australia, and as I also mentioned we're actually working with the United States very closely not just on the thermonuclear reactor, which is about fusion, but also with storing carbon dioxide underground, particularly in Texas, with a salinity project we're working with them on there. So, yeah, we've got a lot to show them. I'm sure Mr Downer would like to show them around Adelaide as well while they're there and in fact if – I don't know whether it will be in Adelaide or not, I did see a report to that effect, but if it is, I might see if I can use any influence I've got to see if you and Katie might be able to pop in there and say hello to them and the best thing we can show them is the next generation.
CHAIR:
Thank you very much.
[Applause]
Thanks very much for joining us again today Dr Nelson. I'd like to give you a membership card for the next year so you'll always find an audience of some size whenever you come back here during breaks during parliamentary proceedings.
DR NELSON:
Thanks very much.
[ends]
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