AUSTRALIA鈥橲 education minister, David Kemp, was well advised to release his
white paper on university research in the week before Christmas. The policy
proposals are so inadequate they have even been criticised by the national
press. And the timing may have moderated the volume of protest from the halls of
academe.
The white paper, entitled Knowledge and Innovation, does not even acknowledge
the resource problems affecting university research, let alone propose
solutions. On the contrary, it is quite sanguine about the level of support,
about A$1.3 billion a year.
To put that amount of money into perspective, total research funding is about
the same as the extra resources the Howard government found to support the
troops in East Timor. This comparison is a clear reminder that funding
allocations are a political choice. The government is deliberately choosing to
allow research funding to drop each year as a share of total economic output,
and to let the number of research student places fall by about 15 per cent, at a
time when it also has decided to fund troops overseas and increase the salaries
of politicians.
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The white paper seems intended solely to solve Kemp鈥檚 urgent political
problems with the electorate outside capital cities. When his plans were issued
last year in draft form, the regional universities attacked the proposed
transfer of resources to the larger, older institutions in the cities. The new
document specifically re-directs A$16 million to universities with
regional campuses.
The paper also includes welcome rhetoric about research and innovation as
driving forces of a knowledge-based economy. But rhetoric without support
ultimately is hot air. An editorial in The Australian on 22 December said
鈥渁chieving real and substantial breakthroughs in research across the board
requires continuing financial investment. It would be disappointing if the only
real outcome of the white paper was to save Dr Kemp鈥檚 political skin鈥�. I
couldn鈥檛 have put it better.
WATER has again become an intensely political issue for the driest inhabited
continent. The Victorian election moved the question of water for the Snowy
River to centre stage (Antipodes, 2 October). The life of the new Victorian
government became dependent on the vote of the independent member through whose
electorate that once mighty river flows.
But when Victoria proposed giving 28 per cent of natural flow back to the
Snowy, instead of the present 1 per cent, irrigators in New South Wales
protested that this would starve them of water. Federal environment minister
Robert Hill, a senator for South Australia, joined the debate with a claim that
the move would increase salinity in the lower reaches of the Murray, and affect
Adelaide鈥檚 drinking water.
Hill and the farmers need to check their sums. The diversion of the Snowy
accounts for a very small fraction of the Murray鈥檚 water. The proposed increase
in water for the Snowy could be made up by reducing the losses from irrigation
by a mere 3 per cent. The Romans knew that less water was lost to evaporation if
they used pipes instead of open channels. It鈥檚 about time that such a
technological breakthrough reached Australia.
Public subsidies also have encouraged wasteful use of water. The Queensland
government has put the economic cat among the irrigation pigeons by proposing
that a new dam be built only if it is commercially viable鈥攊n other words,
if enough farmers are prepared to pay a rate for water that recovers the cost of
building and operating the irrigation system. Farmers are so used to the subsidy
that they are screaming in protest.
GETTING the sums right won鈥檛 be easy. Last year I quoted the head of CSIRO
Land and Water, Graham Harris, as saying that growing vegetables gives about ten
times as much cash return for each unit of irrigation water as growing rice
(Antipodes 17 July). University of Sydney agricultural economist David Godden
has pointed out to me that while this is true, it would remain true only if a
few farmers switched from rice to vegetables. If lots of farmers made the
change, the price of vegetables would be driven down by oversupply. I鈥檓 not sure
if the price would fall by a factor of ten, but Godden鈥檚 point is valid. All of
which means we need some serious study of the costs and benefits of irrigation,
not just simplistic slogans.