March 19th, 2008

The first day of Science Meets Parliament started off with a series of presentations on meeting with parliamentarians and the involvement of scientists in the media. The typical story of media and scientists went something like this:

A reporter finds out at 2pm that she will be writing a story on nuclear energy for the evening news after a surprise announcement by a parliamentarian. Although she thought she was covering interest rates that day, she gets a list of scientists involved in nuclear energy to get a quote for her story. She rings Professor A and gets forwarded to the department secretary. “Professor A is on sabbatical for six months and is not contactable. However Professor B is an expert on nuclear issues. He isn’t in the office at the moment. He doesn’t believe in mobile phones but he is good with email – he usually gets back within a week.” The reporter contacts her colleagues – one of them has a friend who is a scientist, a biologist, but has an interest in nuclear issues.

In this way there have been some stark headlines quoting scientists; “Trees are Bad for the Environment” is one that has appeared! The message from this is that scientists can become involved in the media, to provide evidence-based science to the public, through the Australian Science Media Centre.

The big message on meeting parliamentarians was not to go to them to whinge. “Given the choice of an extra kindergarten in the electorate or an extra $5m for a research program, which do you think is more attractive for a lot of people? The best approach is to make recommendations on how to solve issues in the area of interest to the parliamentarian’s portfolio. Parliamentarians are much more likely to be responsive to straight messages and concrete examples of how science is providing economic, social or environmental benefits than spin and over-blown “new cure for cancer” type claims.

Meetings with parliamentarians had been arranged and I had been matched with Greg Combet MP and Joe Burke, Industry Advisor to Kim Carr.

The first meeting with Greg Combet was interrupted by a call to the chamber to vote. Apparently these were trivial votes put up so that no real business could be conducted. Greg’s main interest was in the use of coal, which is a key industry in his electorate of Charlton in the Hunter Valley. There was interest about the consensus of research behind climate change and the reality of coal for the next 20 years. It was fair to answer that the scientific consensus was that climate change is real with variability on the exact impact and that coal was a reality as an energy source for the next 20 years. It was a good opportunity to convey the benefit of brick construction on energy efficiency and the work conducted at Newcastle University on the comparison of brick veneer, double brick and lightweight construction as presented by Cathy Inglis at a recent Ceramics Society event in Melbourne. Greg concurred that changes to the building code were needed.

Greg Combet MP and Larry Jordan

Joe Burke talked about the Innovation Review being undertaken by the government with submissions due by the end of April. The issue appears to be to identify the structure for conducting research in Australia with special mention of the CRC scheme and how it is performing. The emphasis appears to be on a substantial change to the innovation system rather than just a relabelling of the current system. It is good to see that the current government is taking a sensible approach to science through its review process.

Later that day there was a presentation by Kim Carr at the National Press Club, where Carr spoke about the need for innovation and selecting the target areas for Australian research in a global environment. Interestingly during question time the focus turned to Dr. Ziggy Switkowski’s offer to resign from ANSTO following election of the Labor government – and this is what made the news the next day.

All in all it was a very beneficial experience learning how to approach politicians and making contacts with people such as Greg Combet and Joe Burke, who I will keep in touch with. I would like to thank the Australasian Ceramics Society for the valuable opportunity to participate in Science Meets Parliament. If the opportunity arises to interact with parliamentarians on behalf of the Australian Ceramics Society, I believe I will be in a much better position to do so, having attended Science Meets Parliament.