AVRAHAMZON, Dr Talia, Head, Policy, Projects and Advocacy, Research Australia BILLIARDS, Dr Saraid, Chief Executive Officer, Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes LEVIN, Ms Nadia, Chief Executive Officer, Research Australia [by video link] SCUFFHAM, Professor Paul, Chair, Policy Advisory Committee, Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences [by video link] CHAIR: Welcome. I understand that information on parliamentary privilege and the protection of witnesses giving evidence to Senate committees has been provided to you. I now invite you to make a short opening statement if you wish. If it's longer, please consider tabling it to allow optimum time for questions from the senators in attendance today. At the conclusion of any remarks, I will invite members of the committee to ask questions. Does anybody have a statement? Ms Levin : We do. Good morning, Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear today on behalf of Research Australia. I've had the privilege of being CEO and managing director of Research Australia for the past 10 of its 24 years. Research Australia is the national peak for health and medical research and innovation, and our members collectively represent the breadth of Australia's research capability and the translation of discovery into better health, economic growth and boosting national productivity. Our core message today is simple: adequately funding and resourcing the CSIRO is not only essential for science; it is essential for Australia's economic future. Cutting funding to the CSIRO and losing capability is cutting a research sector already under pressure. Australia's overall investment in research and development has been declining relative to other advanced economies, and this has consequences. Without sustained and predictable funding, we risk losing the workforce, infrastructure and collaborative capacity that enables Australia to turn research into productivity gains, new industries and improved health outcomes. The CSIRO is a cornerstone of this. Australia needs a clear national ambition for research and development investment, and Research Australia has recommended that we work towards at least three per cent of GDP, which brings us closer to leading innovation economies and ensures that Australia remains competitive in emerging technologies and industries. These issues matter not only for the CSIRO but for the economy. Research and innovation generate high value jobs, attract international investment and create new companies and industries. Organisations such as the CSIRO play a unique role in connecting discovery research with industry capability and commercialisation pathways. In doing so, they help convert publicly funded science into productivity growth, export opportunities and better health outcomes for Australians. In short, the CSIRO should be viewed as national economic infrastructure and valued accordingly—an investment that delivers returns across the economy, from health care and biotechnology to digital innovation and advanced manufacturing. If Australia is serious about improving productivity, building sovereign capability and preparing for future health challenges, sustained investment in our national science agency must be part of that strategy. Thank you. CHAIR: Thank you. Anyone else, either online or in person? Dr Billiards : I'm happy to go. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. First of all, I'd just like to say that CSIRO is not just a research agency; it's part of the backbone of Australia's scientific capability and innovation ecosystem. Its work supports our economic prosperity, environmental stewardship, national security and public wellbeing. Maintaining CSIRO's capability depends on stable, long-term public funding that recognises science as an economic contributor, not as a discretionary expense. The recent and proposed cuts to staff and programs within CSIRO are deeply concerning. Scientific capability, once lost, is not easily rebuilt. Experienced researchers and technical staff take decades to train, and the loss of these jobs weakens efforts to diversify our economy and grow a highly skilled workforce. Unfortunately, though, these issues aren't just isolated to CSIRO. Australia's broader R&D sector faces structural challenges where chronic underfunding limits innovation, workforce retention, impact and the ability to attract international investment. Just as CSIRO faces program cuts and staffing cuts, our leading medical research institutes are also making very difficult decisions about programs and staffing. These threaten not only jobs but also Australia's global scientific standing and the future commercial research pipeline. Public funding is essential for research that serves the national interest. Countries such as Germany, South Korea and Singapore have consistently invested in science, demonstrating the long-term benefits of R&D, from economic growth to technological leadership. Reduced public funding for CSIRO undermines Australia's ability to compete in the global knowledge economy. Australia's sovereign scientific capability is a strategic national asset. A strong domestic research base enables rapid response to emerging threats such as pandemics and disasters. Reliance on overseas research or short-term partnerships cannot substitute for local expertise. CSIRO provides that expertise, and cuts to workforce, infrastructure and programs weaken Australia's resilience. While AAMRI supports CSIRO's move to a One Health approach, recognising the interconnection between human, animal and environmental health, we are concerned that strategic reprioritisation should not lead to permanent loss of skills and talent. Australia's scientific future depends on strong national institutions. We urge this inquiry to affirm the importance of stable, long-term, adequate funding, workforce retention and long-term capability planning for CSIRO. Public investment in science is not just spending money; it is a strategic commitment to the health, security and prosperity of our nation. Thank you. CHAIR: Would anybody else like to make a short statement? Prof. Scuffham : Good morning, Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear on behalf of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. The Academy of Health and Medical Sciences is Australia's authority on, and trusted source of, health and medical science. We are recognised by federal legislation as one of five learned academies in Australia, and we exist to serve the public good by bringing together the nation's foremost researchers and clinician scientists to provide independent, expert, evidence based advice to government, health leaders and the community on issues that shape the nation's health. The academy is the bridge between science and society, connecting the best evidence and expertise to the decisions that matter so that research and innovation translate into better policy and practice and better health outcomes. Health and medical research underpins Australia's health system, economic prosperity and national resilience. It improves population health outcomes, reduces the burden of disease, supports a productive workforce and strengthens our capacity to respond to emerging health threats, including pandemics, biosecurity risks and the ageing population crisis. For these reasons, health and medical research should not be considered discretionary spending. It is essential national infrastructure that supports Australia's long-term wellbeing, preparedness and global competitiveness. In that context, the academy believes the challenges facing the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, CSIRO, should be understood not as evidence of institutional failure but as a warning signal about broader pressures across Australia's research and development system. Over many years, Australia has experienced declining real investment in research and development, increasing fragmentation across publicly funded research agencies and the absence of a clear mechanism to sustain critical national research capability over time. Issues raised in relation to CSIRO therefore reflect systemic pressures that extend beyond a single organisation. The academy recognises that CSIRO must periodically review and adjust its strategic priorities. Changes in focus within health and medical science are both expected and appropriate, as national needs evolve and scientific opportunities emerge. However, strategic reprioritisation should not be conflated with the loss of underlying capability. Reductions in workforce capacity risk dispersing specialised expertise, eroding interdisciplinary capability and weakening Australia's ability to respond to emerging health challenges. Once lost, those capabilities are difficult and costly to rebuild. Maintaining a strong foundation of health and medical research capability is therefore essential to ensuring that Australia retains the capacity to anticipate and respond to future risks and opportunities. In particular, CSIRO plays a distinctive role in the national research system through its ability to integrate expertise across disciplines, conduct horizon scanning and provide system-level insights to inform government decision-making. These functions depend on sustained capability and institutional knowledge. Looking forward, the academy believes the most effective response lies in strengthening coordination across the national research system. Processes such as the strategic examination of research and development and the National Health and Medical Research Strategy provide an opportunity to move beyond reactive restructuring and towards deliberate stewardship of national research capability across publicly funded agencies. Through coordinated policy, sustainable investment and clear roles across institutions, Australia can ensure that organisations such as CSIRO continue to deliver long-term national value in health and medical research. Thank you. I look forward to the committee's questions. CHAIR: Thank you. I will now go to Senator Darmanin. Senator DARMANIN: Thank you all for coming. Could you talk a bit about where CSIRO research adds unique health and medical value that isn't already funded elsewhere—either industry or broader government funding for health and medical research—to try to understand the CSIRO's role in this space, particularly when thinking about the Medical Research Future Fund and NHMRC grants. I don't know who's best to cover that; I'll leave that up to you. Ms Levin : I'm happy to jump in and take that. The answer to that is actually, 'It depends.' That is partly because the proposed cuts that the CSIRO is putting forward talk about a research unit but not the projects themselves, so it becomes very difficult to understand where the differentiation might be, particularly with regard to duplication in terms of funding or where other institutions—universities, MRIs and so forth—are picking up the research. In terms of health and biosecurity, there are capabilities that would also be part of natsec that, obviously, from a general public point of view, we wouldn't necessarily be aware of. Animal house would be another area. There are national infrastructure datasets that have been funded for well over the past century. Understanding where those are going to live and how they're going to be passed forward and exactly what that impact is is problematic for any of us to be able to answer. I think that's at the core of our concerns: the transparency around understanding the research projects themselves that are going to be cut, as well as the core capabilities—not only that they're going to be cut but where they're going to go. There is an assumption that they'll be picked up elsewhere because it's not the core business of what the CSIRO is doing. So it's hard to give an evidence based, exact answer to the question. My colleagues might have more to add. Dr Billiards : I would concur with what Nadia has said. But I think the development of the National Health and Medical Research Strategy is supposed to be able to resolve this issue we have in the country. Whether it will do that or not is a question that will remain to be answered, but the idea of that is to be able to streamline and reduce inefficiencies in the sector so that the funding that is available is far more impactful than perhaps what we're seeing now. Senator DARMANIN: That also picks up the point that Professor Scuffham made in terms of a coordinated strategy and approach. Where is that strategy coordination up to? How does that feed into this process—or does it? Dr Billiards : That's a good question. The strategy was supposed to be released at the end of last year. It's still going through deliberations within government. It's also one piece of the puzzle, which is also the strategic review of R&D. And the National Health and Medical Research Strategy is one of the pillars of that SERD review, and that is supposed to be released shortly. So I think the evidence will be in the implementation and how effective those key strategies and recommendations are. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that has presented itself, and now the proof is in the pudding about the implementation. Ms Levin : I'll add that the CSIRO lives in one portfolio, being the industry portfolio, and the National Health and Medical Research and Innovation Strategy is predominantly health. Therein lies the problem that we've got. If we have a look at the research units that are being impacted according to the CSIRO submission, we're talking about just over 30 per cent of health and biosecurity; then, of course, we've got agriculture and food, which adds about another 10 per cent. The question that we have is: are we saying that that research conducted in those areas is (a) no longer needed as a national opportunity, and, if so, let us understand that, or (b) an assumption, as the committee heard earlier from Dr Stephen Rintoul, and our concern is that somebody else will pick it up because it is a health issue, particularly with the understanding of the Australian Centre for Disease Control? There are a lot of assumptions being made, but in our discussions with the health portfolio there seems to be a lack of awareness as to the research that's going to be cut in health and biosecurity. Where's that going to go? Are we saying we just don't need to do that research anymore, and, if that's the case, we should table that and understand that. But the assumption that another portfolio will pick it up, if that is indeed the assumption, brings us back to the net issue of budgetary pressures. It's one bucket, from the government's point of view. Where it lives in the portfolios doesn't make an impact on the budget, and that's essentially where the starting point of this is. We acknowledge there are economic constraints but pushing it to another part of government doesn't solve the problem. Senator DARMANIN: I hear what you are saying, Ms Levin. It sounds like there are a lot of assumptions being made in lots of different areas, but there's also, as Dr Billiards indicated, a once-in-a-lifetime review of a range of different parts of how all of these things are working together. My understanding is that the process is yet to conclude. We are yet to come to a final position on a lot of these questions. Is that right? Dr Billiards : Correct. Senator DARMANIN: To Research Australia, your submission notes that around a quarter, or 24 per cent, of all Australian research and development spending is on health and medical research, which would amount to an annual investment of about $10.4 billion. Is it correct to say that much of that funding comes from the Medical Research Future Fund and NHMRC? Ms Levin : That is correct: they come from the MREA and the MRFF as part of that. Yes, that would be the bulk of the funding. There's a nominal amount out of the ARC, but that is for broader science rather than health and medical research. Senator DARMANIN: Clearly, there are a lot of priorities for research in our country. Given such a large proportion of Commonwealth R&D funding is dedicated to medical research, what's your view on the expectation of CSIRO to spend a considerable proportion of its $1 billion annual appropriation on medical research when we think about the context of the other needs of our country? How do we marry those things up? Ms Levin : I think it's a great question, and I'll come at it from two angles. In terms of the investment in R&D more broadly, Australia is falling behind. In terms of the Economic Complexity Index, we rank as the 74th most economically complex country out of 145, despite being in the top 10 for the richest economy per capita. When you have a look at our investment into GDP—and I'll limit it, in terms of your question, to health and medical research—we're falling behind by just under two per cent per annum with comparably ranked economies. So we're already behind the eight ball, and then we've got inflationary pressures not only to deliver for an ageing population but to provide wellness and the best possible care for our population. And that doesn't even take into consideration forecast population growth. In terms of who we want to be as a nation, what does that look like? What does our workforce look like, and how do we care for our citizens? To come to your point, which is, 'Why should CSIRO be increasing its spend on health and medical research when there are other funding sources?'—am I correct in understanding your question? Senator DARMANIN: I guess I'm trying to contextualise the other funding sources available for medical and health research when perhaps other areas don't have access to those same pools of money. Ms Levin : It's a great question, and here's the thing—the two funds, the MREA and the MRFF, seem like a lot of money. In terms of our success rates for our researchers, they're running at numbers that are—perhaps I might coin a phrase—almost laughable, with a 13 per cent success rate. So we've got a lot of researchers putting grant applications in, and there's simply not enough money in the pot for it to go around. We do put the government of the day in an invidious position of needing to play Solomon. How do you decide whether you fund one disease over another? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could just say, 'Let's fund everything'? I imagine that would be, equally for everyone in the room, something that we would like to do. But we have to deal with the rational economics of the day and those constraints, and we have to make tough decisions. What we're saying is we don't have enough to fund the demands of the population as it stands at the moment. So, if we take that 32 per cent of health and biosecurity—and I'll add agriculture and food in, because that comes to social determinants of health and equity of access—we are saying: what is that research and those projects that we're saying the CSIRO is not going to fund? And that comes back to my question: What are they? Where's the transparency around that which says: 'We don't need them. It's not going to affect the population. We don't need to do that research'? Or is the assumption we do need to do the research but it's not the responsibility of the CSIRO, and somebody else can pick it up? That's where I come back to—who's going to pick it up? And, more importantly, what's going to be the impact on Australia's national capability and the health and wellbeing of us all? Senator DARMANIN: I have one final question for Dr Billiards. In your submission, you called out the independence of CSIRO leadership in allocating resources being essential to maintaining scientific integrity. Do you agree that it's prudent for the CSIRO leadership to review and, where necessary, make changes to how they allocate resources even if it does then have resulting changes to the workforce that are informed by that independent approach? Dr Billiards : Absolutely. If you're going to be able to enable research to keep up with the contemporary environment, you need to be strategic in making those decisions. Most researchers are very talented in terms of being able to pivot, so it's not a matter of losing those skill sets; it's more about transferring those skill sets into other areas where the need is required. Being able to make those strategic decisions is critical not only for CSIRO but more broadly for the entire sector. Senator DARMANIN: Thank you. Prof. Scuffham : I think where the $10 billion comes from is debatable. What we have is competitive funding of $1 billion through the NHMRC and $600 million through the MRFF. That's $1.6 billion we have. It's highly competitive. CSIRO get $1 billion. That's almost a lump sum that they distribute as they see fit. We have, as Nadia said, 13 per cent. In some cases, it's down eight per cent. Hundreds or thousands of researchers are applying for these grants, spending weeks on end applying for these things, with an eight per cent success rate. It's somewhat futile to a large degree. With regard to the workforce, sure, people can be displaced, and CSIRO are doing that, but where do these people go? Eighteen universities last year had over 3½ thousand redundancies. The other universities have got processes around attrition and not replacing staff. So the actual workforce in universities is decreasing substantially, and people displaced from CSIRO can't really go to universities, because there are no jobs there for them to pick up. They can't go there and start a new stream of research. The R&D funding through industry has also decreased substantially with where we sit at 1.69 per cent of GDP. The amount that industry funds for research and development is decreasing and continues to decrease. That'll come out in the SERD report shortly, and hopefully there'll be some mechanism there to increase that. But it also means that, for those researchers who are displaced, getting jobs in industry is also very hard. There's essentially nowhere to go. There's a lot of talent and skill that gets lost completely. And rebuilding that—to do a PhD takes people six, seven or eight years. Those are the sort of people we need. And then they need a few years to really get up to speed and, and develop their own research areas of expertise. So the investment takes an awful long time to recover from these cuts. CHAIR: I will ask a question that segues from that and then I'm going to let Senator Pocock continue on. We heard earlier evidence of consultation in relation to these changes. I'm wondering if anybody can make a comment—we're all talking here about the implications of cuts, but I want to understand whether there's been enough opportunity for you to contribute to the conversation around productivity rather than simply talking about reduction in funds. Prof. Scuffham : As an economist, I think we have to be clear about productivity versus efficiency. I think the health field, health care in general, and health and medical research—health care is different from the rest of the sector. It's something where we don't really want to increase productivity; we want to increase efficiency. Productivity is how much you can produce in a given time. It's saying, 'How many hip replacements can we do in a year? Should we increase that?' as opposed to, 'Can we make it more efficient?' Efficiency is reducing waste and doing things better for less cost. That's what we've got to focus on. We have an ageing population, we have a diminishing workforce in health care and we have much higher demand for health services across the board. So we have to really focus on how to get more efficiency in the system, and the only way we can do that is through research, substituting technology research to develop technology and then substituting technology for labour in the health field. That way, we can improve health outcomes, and people will get what they need where they need it and when they need it and really become much more efficient. Ms Levin : We've been an incredibly lucky country where we made our we made our winnings and our living and our earnings off the back of sheep and then resources. But, if we are indeed to pivot away from a single based, resources based economy through to a knowledge economy, then I put to the committee that we need to double down on our investment, which includes the topic that we're talking about today, to make that contribution to productivity. I would suggest that, if health and medical research were a resource that was in the ground, I have no doubt that we'd have incredible equipment over it right now and be exploiting it. It is our opportunity to create future looking future industries to be able to compete competitively with the rest of the world. And we have to make a decision: are we buying it or not? Dr Avrahamzon : I wanted to pick up a point that that Nadia made earlier about productivity as well. Often, we're having the conversations that health and medical research contributes only to health outcomes and then a better workforce. Our sector contributes to the economy in multiple ways. And we could look at there was a recent report from McKinsey that said we could add $12 trillion to the global GDP by 2040 with an eight per cent boost that translates to 0.4 per cent faster growth every year. That's about the economy. We need to shift the conversation that health and medical research only contributes to better health outcomes. CHAIR: Senator Pocock. Senator BARBARA POCOCK: Thank you so much for your very clear submissions and your presentations this morning. I think they've been very to the point and thorough, but I have a bunch of questions. Ms Levin, I want to go to your question you posed to us, which is: is this work no longer needed, or is someone else going to do it? I think that implicit in your question are possible answers that you want to offer us, because it seems to me, having lived, like all of us, through the pandemic and an incredible array of medical, health and agriculture and food challenges—biosecurity and all the issues—that there is not a shrinking demand for this work. We also heard earlier—in relation to climate, for example—that there is no-one else to do it. I have many scars from being an applicant for Australian Research Council grants. Indeed, I ran a research centre on those funds for 10 years, and I'm still in recovery. It's extremely difficult with a 20 per cent success rate to do any kind of long-term science. Most of those projects, in social science, at least, are three years. You cannot do groundbreaking, significant, foundational research on those grants. They are for pursuing really important questions around fairly narrow pieces of terrain—indeed, very tightly constrained research questions. So let me hear your answers to the questions you pose. Is the demand gone? Are there other people that can do it in the area of medical and scientific research—health research? Ms Levin : I think the situation we have is that, if somebody else is going to pick up the research or the projects that the CSIRO is not going to be continuing on with, we have to ask who. If it's going to be another publicly funded research agency or institution, that means that we are not achieving the goal, which is efficiency on the budget. So it feels like a futile exercise in which only research loses out and we get very little gain or we get no gain at all. In fact, we only get a loss. If it's going to be industry—I'm presuming that there are only two other places that are going to pick up the research. If it's not going to be publicly funded, it's going to be privately funded. If industry was interested and going to be doing that research, then presumably they would have been doing it already because the one thing they're really good at is making money, as they should be. So the opportunity of the research that a publicly funded research agency like the CSIRO does would be, for example, if we took cotton farming. There are pieces of research on resilient crops that, yes, ultimately will enable a higher return on investment for the industrial sector. But who's going to do the research at the front end that ensures we have an industry and a farming opportunity for our growers to be able to participate in this and make a contribution to our GDP? It is a thread that you pull, and, once you pull it, there's all sorts of unravelling that happens all along the ecosystem and the food chain. Long story short—no, I don't think that somebody else is going to pick it up, partly because there's nothing in it for them if they're industry and they've got other pressures elsewhere. And if it's elsewhere in the portfolio, it's the same bucket of money at the end of the day. If it's not there, it's not there. I suppose you'll say to me, 'Well, then, what do you propose, because it's not an endless bucket of money?' And I think that could be a fair point. It's about having a look at the whole system as opposed to just a small piece here—let's cut here and tweak here and do this—because it's death by a thousand cuts. We have to ask those hard questions from a productivity point of view: Who do we want to be? What do we need to be able to get there? How are we going to make that investment? Because it doesn't happen by happy coincidence. Senator BARBARA POCOCK: We heard evidence this morning about the sovereign capability loss and the particular challenges in our hemisphere, and we heard that the CSIRO is able to look to our hemisphere and do the research that is critical to our part of the world. Does that threat of loss of capability, in relation to our place in the world, also apply in health and medical science research? Ms Levin : Absolutely—without a shadow of a doubt. Research, regardless of where it is, is not a tap that you can turn on and off. As my colleague Paul Scuffham was saying, there is long-term investment that's needed. You don't just get a discovery—we don't invent wi-fi overnight. It would be lovely if we could. But what is the next great invention that Australia offers to the world? What other industries and workplace do we offer to aspiring brilliant minds? Are we going to build it, grow it or buy it? Either way, there's a cost imperative and we need to make that decision. So, while we're talking about the funding cuts to the CSIRO, what we're actually talking about is the broader system and what that national capability means to Australia. Senator BARBARA POCOCK: I think you've all made a very strong argument about the macro level of enough continued funding across the sector in health and medical research. What does the CSIRO in particular do in this area that other parts of the research ecosystem are not able to do? Explain to us why we need to protect the CSIRO in particular. Ms Levin : I think—I'm going to hand over to Paul; I don't want to dominate the room—what I will say is, biosecurity would be one area of great concern. There would be information that none of us would be privy to, as I mentioned earlier, due to national security reasons. You raised the comment about how we all lived through COVID and it is likely in our lifetime we will live through something similar. That was not a surprise. And the reason it was not a surprise is because we had great minds—not only at CSIRO but elsewhere in the system, but particularly at CSIRO—who have been working in this area of endeavour for decades. That is what allows us that capability of being able to forecast to protect us, and that falls to a public-good, publicly funded research agency like the CSIRO. Who else is going to do it if they don't? Senator BARBARA POCOCK: Is there not the same argument here as there was in relation to ocean research and the implications of failing to predict climate change, and the real implications for farmers across Australia? Isn't the possibility here that we will pay a massive cost down the track for failure to do that predictive research in relation, for example, to biosecurity? I see you nodding. Ms Levin : Without a shadow of a doubt. Prof. Scuffham : I'll jump in as well. Biosecurity is a major issue. CSIRO do own one of two PC4 labs in Australia, predominantly around large animals and biosecurity, which protects our farming and agriculture industry. That's absolutely vital for the country. The other area is in digital health. They've made great strides that no-one else can do at the national level around how we integrate all these health records. There's so much more to go, but one example is using My Health Record to be able to—for hospitals, GPS and everyone else, all that information goes straight to My Health Record. That was done by CSIRO with the platform that they developed. That platform is being extended to electronic medical records. Every time you're in the emergency department, the Department of Health and Ageing typically get a record to say that you've been to the emergency department—'This is how long; this is the cost associated with it based on various metrics.' That's the crude, high-level data, but there's so much other information that's being recorded, like what your blood pressure is when you arrive, what it was when you left and your heart rate. If you're in the intensive care unit, you get constant monitoring of vital signs. All that's being recorded. That information can really help researchers to understand and predict how to make people better off—what works, what doesn't. CSIRO are now integrating that and using systems to be able to summarise that information so that we as researchers make sense of it and create meaningful change. No-one else is doing this. Senator BARBARA POCOCK: It is possible that some citizens out there are watching this and are concerned, having lived through COVID themselves, about maintaining and building that capability. You've made the point between you that, once lost, it's incredibly difficult and costly to rebuild. There are long time lags, I take from what you've given us in evidence, in rebuilding that capability and having it available at the emergency moment when the next disaster arises. Have I understood that correctly? Is there anything further you want to say about that? Dr Billiards : What we're seeing at the moment not just at CSIRO but across the sector is that our early to mid-career researchers are the ones who—that's the mass exodus of our population of scientific talent. It's not only the time invested in them to get their PhDs to get their skill sets up, but that is often the period of time where the great innovations and discoveries are made, because they've got the capabilities to do so without the extra management and so forth. When you lose that proportion of your workforce, that will take decades or more. Not only that, what we're seeing is that people don't want to come into the industry anymore, because of job insecurity. Things such as what we're seeing here at CSIRO but also across the sector as a whole—we need to be able to encourage the next generation to come into science, and, at the moment, we're doing a really poor job of that. Success rates are really low. Our institutes are looking at closing their doors because the funding that you do receive from government doesn't nearly cover the costs of research. With the cost-of-living crisis and everything else, the more you delay it, the more expensive it gets. The funding that's coming with that is just not keeping up with the inflation of undertaking that research, so we really run the risk of losing the amazing talent that we have in this country. When we talk about maintaining sovereign capability and looking at what other areas of research we should be keeping on this island, we run the risk of facing some major catastrophes. Internationally, there is research that could be undertaken, but it might not apply to what we need here in Australia. That is really fundamental and should be considered as part of the strategies that are being developed. Dr Avrahamzon : I'd like to build on the discussion about EMCRs as well. There's a real equity piece here for everyone but particularly for women and for our regions as well. In terms of women in the health and medical research sector, they are something like 52 per cent of the workforce, so there is some parity. But, as we see going into the leadership, we're dropping down to 25 per cent. If we drain our EMCRs, we're actually going to drain the attempt to move into some kind of equity in our workforce. We know the importance of that for a whole range of different perspectives but also for the regions. We know that 30 per cent of our population live in the region. The parity of research that is undertaken for our regions, by our regions and with our regions but also the workforce—they will also be the first to go. Senator BARBARA POCOCK: We know the composition of our research workforce affects the questions they ask and the way they pursue them. Thank you for making that point. We've had a series of years of threatened and actual falls in staff and waves of change in CSIRO. Has the perception of early career researchers and mid-career researchers about CSIRO as a destination for a career changed in recent times? Ms Levin : I think we'd have to say so not only for CSIRO but for research more broadly. If you're one of the 26 per cent of staff at the CSIRO who are on temporary or casual contracts, you'd have to be worried about things like where your next dollars are coming from, especially when you're spending half of the three years of your research grant having to apply for your next research grant with an eight per cent success rate. We're just creating this unholy cycle. It's not an attractive, stable pathway that any young person would necessarily want to follow, and that is the travesty. We want smart people who are scientifically trained—curious, smart individuals—as part of our economy not only in research but more broadly, understanding that not all researchers who are trained will end up at the CSIRO or attract tenure in a university. This is about encouraging the curiosity and the smart minds of a STEM future and a STEAM future and for smart young people to be ensuring that Australia has a globally competitive future and that we can take care of ourselves. Senator BARBARA POCOCK: I'm sitting here, and I will say that I just stepped out at morning tea time and ran into some journalists, and they said, 'Why are we in this situation?' This is the question I'm asking myself. We know that it's a core element of productivity, as another senator made a point about. Good research on fundamental questions is critical to managing serious risks, especially in relation to health and medical issues, it seems to me. If we don't do it, we'll pay a massive economic cost down the track, possibly or at least predictably. What is your assessment about why we have underinvested over successive governments and are failing now? You said that we are two per cent behind the international average, and we're falling further behind. Why are we in that situation? Why do we get so little attention when there are very big numbers going to other areas of government spending? Ms Levin : Because it's hard. Dr Billiards : I think that is a question that we ask ourselves every single day, particularly in these roles. I think one of the issues is that our sector crosses many portfolios, and they don't speak. If there were a whole-of-government understanding of the importance of our sector, I think it would go a long way to helping that. Also, the immediate returns on investment take a while, and with your cyclical nature of government and short-term funding, it really—these international countries that I talked about have got a vision of putting in the funding for 10 to 15 years. We don't do that in this country. We do short-change funding, and it's really hard to get your feet under the table and to drive that innovation. Health and medical research often just gets considered as a health department or health minister issue, but it's industry; it's many, many other jurisdictions as well. I think that's a fundamental problem for our country. Ms Levin : It's not just about health care, and it often gets shuffled into that. It's also seen as a cost. There's a difference between funding and investment, and I put it to the committee that we need both. There is an expectation. It's also seen as hard to explain, and I have to say that my colleagues on the call and others work really hard with our sector to get better at explaining what it is we do and the value to our economy. We also have to accept that responsibility, because we're all in this together. It's not a question of us sitting there pointing fingers, saying it's all on the government. It's on all of us as citizens because it affects all of us. When we turn up to a GP or an emergency department, or when we're thinking about a start-up or an incredible bioengineering feat, this is of benefit for all of us, and it's how we participate and create the environment for that participation. Good health policy is good economic policy, and I think that recognising the difference between funding and investment and the need to do both is crucial, and it is a discussion that we should be having at the macro level. Senator BARBARA POCOCK: Thank you so much. Prof. Scuffham : I have a point to add to that, because a lot of health research is translational; it's not commercial. Discovering a drug, developing a new medical device—fantastic; they can be commercialised. The problem is we often sell those. We develop it so far, sell the licence overseas and leave it to someone else to develop at an international level. Then we buy it back at exorbitant prices. We do that across multiple sectors, not just health. Most health research is: How do we care for patients better in or out of hospital? What are the processes? How do we develop clinical guidelines to manage these? They have minimal commercial value but huge social value. So the investment isn't there. People aren't really willing to say, 'Yes, this is where I want to invest because this is what I want,' because there's no return. There's no financial return on that investment. Senator BARBARA POCOCK: What does that push towards commercialisation, which is very evident inside CSIRO, do for the shape of our research? How does it affect the shape of our investment and what we do? Ms Levin : Are we really going to subject our national science agency to the whims of a commercial market? It's a publicly funded research agency doing research for public good. It is a cornerstone of our research sector. That said, if you have a look at wi-fi, the genesis of that was indeed this incredible science agency that we have, and we look forward to the next one. But at the end of the day, if there is the opportunity for commercialisation, and it should certainly be one of the pathways for a CSIRO, why not? But to put the pressure on it that it is going to be a catch-all rather than supplementary to the public good defies what a publicly funded research agency is all about. CHAIR: I thank the panel for their evidence today..