| Science Meets Parliament | June 10th, 2009 |
 Dr. Philip Walls Director SmP (organised by FASTS www.fasts.org, the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies), is held each year in the old and new parliament houses. It is a combination of seminars and workshops that cover how to communicate with politicians and the press, followed by an opportunity to meet with members from both the house of representatives and the senate, for discussions on an aspect of science and technology that interests you. This year I attended along with Dr Leigh Sheppard from the University of Western Sydney as representatives of the Australian Ceramic Society. The event is held over two days, the first day concentrating on how to communicate with politicians, the second meeting with one to three house representatives or senate members. The politicians choose which topics they are interested in from the following:
The attendee ranks the top 3-4 they are interested in, in my case,
The topic I selected to raise with the politicians was to introduce them to the geopolymer a class of materials within the family of ceramics. Day 1  The first day consisted on a number of panel discussions, presentations and workshops. More information is available here. A dinner was held in the evening at Parliment House, where Professor Penny Sackett, the Chief Scientist of Australia gave a rousing speech to the science and political community on the need for even closer links and support for research and innovation to help us out of the economic downturn. FASTS "Profesor Sackett's forthright keynote speech to the Science meets Parliament Dinner is compulsory reading for anyone interested in the implications of what climate science is telling policy makers and citizens". Download here. Day 2 Meetings with Parliamentarians The whole reason for SmP is to introduce one to the parliamentary system, learn the most effective way of communicating with politicians and attend meetings with parliamentarians interested in similar areas of science and technology. FASTS organised us into groups of three to meet with the politicians for 20-30 minutes. One issue we had to live with was the potential for the members to be called to the house to vote on a division. There are clocks all over parliament house which have green and red lights. When the red light flashes and a bell rings that means that the senate members need to get to the senate in 4 minutes and when the green light flashes, the House of representative members need to attend and vote. I found it all very Pavlovian (dogs-bells-salivation came to mind). The New Parliament house is massive on the inside and we needed a guide to find the offices of the parliamentarians we were visiting. It really was like the Tardis (for you Dr. Who fans, much larger on the inside that it appears from outside). All in all though a pleasant workspace, with nice art on the walls and manicured gardens between wings of the buildings. A CSIRO clean coal scientist and an obesity psychologist and I met with the honorable Anna Burke , member for Chisholm, in Victoria. We had decided to present our cases for about 4-5 mins and field any questions from Anna. Part way through (I managed to give my presentation, as did Chris Green from CSIRO) the bell sounded, Anna apologised that she had to leave and that was that it, our meeting was over! We had been advised the day before that this is how it happens in parliament, its not worth getting frustrated, you just have to schedule another meeting time. The next meeting was with the Honourable Ian Mcfarlane , member for Groom in Queensland. Now in opposition, Ian is shadow minister for Energy and Resources. In this meeting I was joined by Christine Charles who works on fuel cells and ion drives for spacecraft and Mahananda Dasgupta who works at ANU measuring very low concentrations (10-15) of plutonium, uranium and other elements for a number of projects including looking at tracking erosion of river deltas in australia and overseas. Ian was very interested in the geopolymer materials I showed him especially regarding the reduced greenhouse footprint, and when I told him about the theory that the pyramids had been partially fabricated from geopolymer material, he mentioned that a family member had chipped off a bit and performed some analysis some time ago! I thoroughly enjoyed the SmP event and would recommend early career researchers and technologists within the society to apply to attend in future years. Thanks to FASTS for organising this. | |
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