This is the transcript of the Ralph Slatyer Address on Science and Society by President of the Australian Academy of Science, Professor Chennupati Jagadish AC, on the Cooperative Research Australia 2025 National Innovation Policy Forum. The occasion was held on the National Press Club of Australia on Monday 3 November 2025.
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Good afternoon.
Patricia – thanks to your form introduction.
And thanks all for being right here at present
I, too, acknowledge the standard custodians of this land, the Ngunnawal People.
I pay my respects to their Elders, previous and current.
It is an honour to be right here and be part of champions for progress who’ve delivered this address over the years – from throughout academia, politics, enterprise and trade.
I thank Jane O’Dwyer, CEO of Cooperative Research Australia, for this chance, and the Slatyer household for welcoming me so warmly and encouraging me to talk as freely and boldly – as Ralph did.
I bear in mind Professor Ralph Slatyer fondly.
When I arrived in Australia in 1990 and began at ANU, he was there, on the prime.
I used to be on the backside – however that’s a fantastic place to be when you have got somebody like Ralph Slatyer to look as much as.
I admired him vastly.
He was broadly thought to be the chief of Australian science.
I’d argue he nonetheless is, in our nationwide consciousness. He set Australia’s analysis capabilities in movement.
Professor Jagadish with the Slatyer household and Ms Patricia Kelly and Ms Jane O’Dwyer from Cooperative Research Australia.
I not too long ago spoke along with his daughter, Judy, who’s right here at present along with different members of the Slatyer household, Beth, Tony and Richard.
Judy’s private reflections matched her father’s public persona.
He was form, she mentioned – and curious.
A real optimist, with a pure inclination to hunt out options.
He was a trainer at coronary heart, at all times sharing his information with others.
And a born collaborator, too.
He had the knack for getting individuals onboard.
Judy recalled their household holidays in the Snowy Mountains when she and her siblings have been youngsters. They spent their days foraging and fossicking.
Only later in life did Judy realise these journeys have been a ploy by her father to proceed his scientific research over the varsity break.
Alpine trees were his specialty, you see.
I’ve my very own recollections of Ralph’s inquisitive nature.
He met each problem with real curiosity.
Every drawback had an answer simply ready to be found.
And Ralph was at all times optimistic.
He believed science was the important thing to creating the lives of Australians higher – and our nation larger.
That was when ‘the clever country’ entered the Australian vernacular.
Hawke was Prime Minister; Slatyer his trusted science adviser.
They set out on a quest to construct a information economic system in order that Australia might loosen its reliance on minerals and agriculture.
And on imported technology and borrowed analysis.
As one of Hawke’s ministers, John Dawkins, mentioned on the time, I quote:
“We cannot enter the next century rollicking on the sheep’s back or creaking and swaying in some coal truck.”
Collaboration was on the coronary heart of this mission.
As , it was Ralph Slatyer who established the Cooperative Research Centres, bringing collectively authorities, trade and researchers in a means Australia had by no means completed earlier than to gasoline what he hoped could be a seismic ‘knowledge lift’ into the following millennium.
I’m acutely conscious I now stand at the same vantage level to the place Professor Slatyer stood 35 years in the past, surveying the advanced panorama earlier than us.
We collect at a second of profound consequence – not only for our sector, however for our nation’s future.
And for future generations, in whom we should instil hope and alternative.
Today I’d wish to share with you the strategic actuality for science and technology in an era of huge disruption.
The world is being reshaped earlier than our eyes.
We’re witnessing what has been referred to as the fourth industrial revolution: the technological revolution.
Near-daily advances in synthetic intelligence, quantum science, robotics, autonomous methods, area applied sciences, genomics…. the checklist goes on.
These should not distant potentialities.
They are the foreign money of energy and prosperity proper now.
Change so speedy that legislators, regulators and analysts wrestle to maintain up.
At the identical time, the geopolitical panorama is more and more adversarial, fragmented, and contested.
The snug assumptions of worldwide cooperation that formed our previous are being examined and – in many circumstances, shattered.
Multilateral establishments face unprecedented pressure.
National safety threats are now not restricted to components that compromise our borders.
Rather, overseas interference, cyberattacks, threats to crucial infrastructure, and rampant disinformation create a posh intelligence surroundings.
A world the place R&D makes us safer and extra susceptible on the similar time. While geonomics and engineering biology make us more healthy, they develop the danger of biowarfare.
Scientists are requested to rethink the liberty of their collaborations.
We are in a worldwide race for STEM expertise.
Major conflicts rage in Ukraine, the Middle East, and Sudan.
The relationship between main powers is outlined by competitors.
There is a worldwide reconfiguration of our vitality methods, essential to decarbonise our economies, whereas not weakening them.
And here is what issues for all of us in this room: science and technology sit on the absolute centre of these modifications.
We are on the centre of these modifications.
Not on the periphery. Not as an afterthought. At the centre.
What we select for science at present, will form our future.
Last month’s crucial minerals settlement between the United States and Australia underscores this.
It wasn’t merely a commerce deal.
It was recognition that geopolitics now activates entry to the uncooked supplies of the technological revolution.
Key pillars of the US–Australia alliance embody crucial minerals, new applied sciences, and technology switch for defence functions.
Similarly, the Prime Minister’s latest engagement with China centered on agricultural innovation, metal decarbonisation, inexperienced iron, and renewable vitality technology – all questions of scientific and technological functionality.
These aren’t remoted examples.
They are illustrations of a brand new strategic actuality.
A actuality the place Australia’s alliances and subsequently our nationwide safety and prosperity are decided by our nation’s scientific and technological energy.
It is subsequently a matter of strategic nationwide curiosity that we now have the strongest doable science and technology functionality we will probably muster.
What we select for science at present, will form our future.
The pathway is just not easy, however neither is it past the wit of our individuals.
There are regarding macrotrends.
The surroundings that scientists function in at present has turn into extra crowded and extra opaque than in the previous.
Today, the non-public sector is a big and rising actor in the scientific and technological panorama.
The extraordinary development of a small quantity of huge world technology firms means their financial energy and worldwide affect now exceed these of many nation-states.
Let me put this in perspective.
In 2024, the National Science Foundation reported that as a result of vital development in R&D funded by companies, the share of complete US R&D funded by the federal authorities decreased from 30% in 2011 to 19% in 2021.
This was earlier than the funding cuts applied underneath the present administration.
In the US at present, the enterprise sector now funds 36% of fundamental analysis.
Not utilized analysis. Basic analysis.
That is sort of equal to the 40% share of basic research funded by the United States federal government.
There could also be some in Treasury and in the Department of Industry who could be happy to see that degree of non-public funding in fundamental analysis.
To them I say: watch what you want for.
This presents a severe and vital shift away from open science and away from public good analysis, and in direction of analysis funded for personal use.
Basic analysis solely contributes to our collective basis of information if it is ready to be shared.
And shifts away from it being shared cut back the levers accessible to authorities to form our future.
Professor Jagadish delivers the Ralph Slatyer Address on Science and Society.
This is our actuality.
And it’s the motive why it’s a matter of strategic nationwide curiosity that we now have the strongest doable science and technology sector we will muster.
It can also be one of the motivators for the Academy’s latest proposal to create an enduring supply of public funds to help fundamental analysis in the shape of a Research Fund that’s not dissimilar to the Medical Research Future Fund however for fundamental analysis throughout all disciplines.
Thereby leaving fundamental analysis funding for the general public good in authorities fingers.
We suggest that the Research Fund be established via income earnt by the appliance of a short lived R&D levy on low-R&D-intensive companies that generate greater than $100 million {dollars} in annual income.
Nations throughout the globe have sought to strengthen their science and technology functionality.
European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, in her Political guidelines for the next European Commission 2024–2029, requires analysis and innovation to be positioned on the coronary heart of their economic system.
Former Prime Minister of Italy, Enrico Letta, recommends that the EU add a fifth freedom to the original four freedoms that underpin the European Single Market.
To the present 4 – being free motion of items, companies, individuals and capital – he requires the free motion of analysis, innovation, information, and schooling.
Why? Because the primary 4 fall quick of what is required in at present’s world.
He identifies the necessity to help R&D public–non-public partnerships, to align funding methods, to share analysis infrastructure and to pool information in an open science method.
And what would this obtain?
He argues it is going to drive financial competitiveness and guarantee research-driven developments that profit society as an entire, not only a few.
So everybody – from entrepreneurs to established companies – can leverage the most recent analysis to develop transformative options.
It is deeply democratic and deeply visionary in troubled occasions.
Another former Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, as chair of the Wellcome Trust, recommends that the UK Government doubles down on its strengths in research and places its analysis asset into full use by:
- strategically utilizing it to help diplomacy and world affect
- being a regulatory innovator slightly than an adopter – it isn’t solely about creating new applied sciences, however who units the principles for his or her use
- by recognising that well being safety is as paramount as defence safety and that analysis is central to each.
They argue that by flaunting the UK’s observe report in analysis excellence and worldwide collaboration, they will place the UK as the worldwide accomplice of selection for R&D.
In quick, they worth the worldwide change of individuals and concepts.
The Wellcome Trust argue and I quote:
“Investing in R&D will bring growth and prosperity in the UK. Combining investment in R&D with a new approach to how the United Kingdom partners with the world will improve its global standing, make it safer and help find its leadership role in a changing world.”
Science diplomacy is at its finest once we fuse our scientific strengths with our diplomatic experience intentionally, and strategically.
When we recognise that worldwide science collaboration is not only about advancing information – it is about constructing affect, establishing norms, and creating alternatives that serve Australian pursuits.
In this space Australia has the important components however has failed to show this right into a nationwide strategic functionality.
So, as different nations search to strengthen their science and technology functionality in response to a altering world, we have to ask whether or not Australia’s scientific and technological sector and property are robust, safe and strategic sufficient:
- to gasoline our economic system and productiveness
- to supply nationwide safety
- to strengthen our commerce negotiations
- to help our overseas coverage aims?
I don’t imagine that is the case.
And I wrestle to think about how anybody might argue in any other case.
I cannot rehearse the present situations of our R&D sector at size.
You all know them:
Our quarries are deep and brimming.
The high quality of our science and scientists is phenomenal.
R&D funding is now thus far behind the typical OECD as a proportion of GDP invested in R&D, it will take an additional $33.4 billion dollars per annum just to get to parity.
We are glorious worldwide collaborators.
Our STEM expertise pool is phenomenal, however too small to satisfy our nationwide wants.
Thanks to an 18-month investigation by the Academy printed in September, we all know we endure shortages in information scientists, geologists and materials scientists.
Our economic system is over-reliant on few industries and has the complexity of Botswana.
The profitable companies we do have are largely reluctant traders in new-to-market R&D.
And our industrial and manufacturing sector is having a big, albeit snail-paced, makeover.
Fragmentation prevents effectivity and scale.
And Australia has no overarching science and technology imaginative and prescient or technique.
Sadly, I can say with each confidence and despair, that science and technology is neither positioned nor valued because the nationwide strategic asset it’s on the coronary heart of our potential to commerce, make offers, increase productiveness and navigate geopolitical complexity.
While nations throughout the globe search to strengthen their science and technology functionality in response to a altering world, Australia has not.
These are the explanations the Academy fought so lengthy and onerous for a complete root-and-branch evaluation of the R&D system.
To make the science and technology sector match for goal in our quickly altering world.
And that’s the reason the Academy has taken daring steps to determine Australia’s Global Talent Attraction Program, recognising that we’re in a worldwide race for STEM expertise, so pressing that it can not watch for critiques.
We can not make good on our crucial minerals guarantees when the quantity of geologists we appeal to, practice and retain is in freefall.
Nor can we depend on importing expertise when the International Union of Geological Sciences says different nations are experiencing related declines.
We can’t absolutely undertake and exploit AI capabilities when just one in 4 yr 12 college students is learning maths.
What we select for science at present, will form our future.
The time to get severe about recasting Australia’s science and technology property was 35 years in the past, as Ralph Slatyer understood.
The subsequent finest time is now.
Thankfully, I’m an optimist like Ralph Slatyer.
I imagine we will get there – if we now have the braveness to behave.
We have a selection.
We have a option to place and prioritise science and technology.
We have an obligation to recognise that in an era of geopolitical, technological and environmental disruption – science and technology should not luxurious investments.
When productiveness is declining, our analysis and innovation unlock industrial diversification and financial development.
We have a have to vastly mature our method to science and technology.
We have an urgency to make the required coverage and structural modifications and investments – even when they’re onerous. Especially when they’re onerous.
That is why a lot is driving on the outcomes of the Strategic Examination of Research and Development – also called the SERD.
And why a lot is driving on the Government’s willingness and braveness to implement its suggestions… supplied they’re smart!
The Academy will measure the SERD’s success by measuring the way it stacks up towards the next ideas.
These are the ideas that underpin a future R&D system – the automobile – that shapes Australia’s future in an more and more advanced and contested world.
The SERD’s suggestions should mirror the next:
- Recognise that science, technological improvement, industrial competitiveness, societal challenges and innovation type a steady community and can’t be tackled in silos or be allowed to cannibalise one another.
- Double down on what works, apply focus and align sources and polices.
- Reduce program duplication and fragmentation.
- Fund and promote excellence in collaborative discovery analysis.
- Stimulate partnership between the general public and non-public sectors regionally, internationally and throughout disciplines throughout the worth chain from discovery via to mass industrial use.
- Enable mobility of researchers regionally, internationally and throughout the worth chain.
- Accelerate and allow analysis and innovation by way of provision of capabilities and instruments like technology infrastructure. Key amongst them is high-performance computing and information. And present for collaborative analysis infrastructure.
- Scale up funding by incentivising alignment and larger contribution of R&D funding from non-public sources and public sources – together with from state and territory governments – in addition to philanthropy.
- Back discovery analysis and dangerous utilized analysis.
- Unleash the ability of authorities procurement.
- Attract, practice and retain STEM expertise, particularly the place gaps exist.
- Collaborate broadly and strengthen sovereign functionality by creating a risk-informed worldwide analysis collaboration method that recognises any nation or establishment generally is a collaborator, a competitor or a rival at any given time. And typically on the similar time.
- Build nuanced and savvy science diplomacy functionality by strategically utilizing science and technology to help diplomacy and world affect, and by enhancing our science intelligence community.
- Create situations that make the change of information, information and applied sciences as open as doable and as closed as mandatory.
- Create situations and regulatory environments that help innovation, safety and security.
- Tend in direction of a tradition that promotes tutorial freedom with accountability.
- Build and deal with our linguistic and cultural competency as a sovereign functionality.
- Create mechanisms to attract on all information sources.
- And by no means, always remember the worth of the sacred contract been science and society.
I acknowledge that it’s a lengthy checklist. But for good motive.
This is just not a trivial train. But it’s an important one.
Technically, we now have a selection.
But really, we now have no selection if we need to prosper in an era of geopolitical, technological and environmental disruption.
Australia’s scientific and technological functionality have to be robust, safe and strategic.
I imagine we will get there – if we now have the braveness to behave.
We owe it to the following technology. To create hope and alternative.
It is commonly mentioned that to manipulate is to decide on.
What we select for science and technology at present, will form our future.
The second to behave is now.
Thank you for the chance to handle you.
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