Speech to Science Meets Parliament 25th Anniversary Gala Dinner
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I am so delighted to part of this 25th anniversary celebration of Science Meets Parliament.
I love these nights, just as I loved going to Science Meets Parliament events over your 25 years.
Both as an original Canberran, and as someone who cherishes our national institutions, it is wonderful that we gather here at the National Museum – a place for collecting and for creating knowledge.
Before dinner, together with the Science and Technology Australia scholars, we had a tour of some of the stories in the Museum’s collection.
Such vital records of the arts, sciences and technologies of Australia’s first peoples.
And of what we now call ‘knowledges.’
Ali Cobby Eckerman, a prize-winning Yankunytjatjara poet, captures this in her poem ‘Today’:
… I am a body of vast knowledges
trekked across this vast continent by foot
the songlines and the dreaming tracks
carried by the wisdom of the air
… I am born of red sand and deep blue sky
… long travelled through darkness to light
I am a body of vast knowledges.
Knowledge as a journey on foot.
Step by step, across immense distances.
Incremental, communal; as much about evidence and experimentation as about dreams and wisdom.
Throughout my life, I’ve had the great fortune to know and work with scientists.
My best friend from high school studied science here at the ANU, as I headed into the liberal arts and law.
She taught me early the essential qualities of curiosity and doubt, and I have always tried to approach my own work in that spirit of exploration – and collaboration.
I have seen at close hand that science is at its best when it speaks to other knowledges; responds to human needs and rights; shapes human flourishing and tackles our big challenges.
I cannot put it better than CSIRO’s CEO Dr Doug Hilton AO, who said: ‘Collaboration is everything.’
I’ve known Doug for quite a while – we served together on the Board of Australians Investing in Women, where Doug brought his intellect and curiosity to bear on a different kind of problem.
When Doug urges collaboration, I can attest that he speaks from experience.
And, Chief Defence Scientist, my friend Professor Tanya Monro AC, says the same thing.
Describing the Defence Science and Technology Strategy 2030 – which bears the title ‘More, Together’ – Tanya says that what will drive transformative research is not short-term, transactional relationships, but deep, long-term partnerships between her organisation and the defence force, the universities, and the science community.
This is the way forward.
It is also how we got here.
Collaboration between science and civil society has always underpinned our quality of life and our vision of the possible.
In fact it is collaboration with all parts of our economy and society where science shines.
In the century between 1920 and 2020, average life expectancy around the world doubled.
What was behind this remarkable achievement?
Big scientific breakthroughs:
Pasteurisation. Vaccination. Antibiotics.
But also the work of reformers, public intellectuals, advocates, educators, and sometimes political leaders: people who formed the bridge between astonishing breakthroughs and public benefits.
The New York Times, in 2021, pointed out:
“From this perspective, the doubling of human life span is an achievement [more] like universal suffrage or the abolition of slavery: progress that required new social movements, new forms of persuasion and new kinds of public institutions to take root.”
That is what Science Meets Parliament is all about.
So tonight, I want to leave you all with two thoughts: the vital role of collaboration, and the place of trust – both in sciences and in our civic life – as vital to our progress and success.
As scientists, researchers, policy makers and reformers, I hope you will continue collaborating.
Continue to break down the walls between disciplines so that no sector is immune to the power of science to create shared understanding, and to help anticipate and resolve our most pressing problems.
I know some young scientists who are doing just that.
One of them is our Young Australian of the Year for 2025, Dr Katrina Wruck.
She is a Mabuigilaig and Goemulgal woman, bringing together revolutionary green chemistry and a connection to Country.
She is already commercialising her groundbreaking research on zeolites, with a view to improving health in the remotest communities.
Another is Victorian Young Australian of the Year, Aishwarya Kansakar.
She is an AI expert and automation entrepreneur, who grew up in war-time Nepal, speaks six languages, migrated to Australia and now heads a world-first AI company based in Melbourne.
To sit down with Aish is to understand how much our science community has been and will be enriched by people from widely diverse backgrounds.
Indeed to scan a list of past Australians of the Year is to see a pantheon of people whose science has transformed our lives.
The Australians of the Year in 2024:
Professor Richard Scolyer and Professor Georgina Long, pioneers in melanoma treatment.
And Professor Michelle Simmons, quantum physicist; Professor Alan Mackay-Simm, biomedical researcher…
Household names like Tim Flannery, Ian Frazer, Fiona Stanley, Sir Gussy Nossal…
The list goes on… and on…
…all the way back to the inaugural winner, immunologist and Nobel laureate Sir Macfarlane Burnett.
As this long list suggests, Australia has brilliant science in our DNA.
And, in spite of rising misinformation and disinformation, by and large Australians look to their scientists for answers.
They want to live in a country where our healthcare, energy sources, climate management, education, and collective wellbeing are all guided by science.
Where our science and research institutions are full of clever men and women, diverse in every way.
And where the challenges we face are not beyond our skill or wisdom to meet.
What that means of course is that Australians must be able to trust the science, and the institutions that produce it.
We must be able to have confidence in their integrity. In the truth of their findings, and in the strength of those bridges between the laboratory and the rest of life.
We know that the challenges of the next century will require even more trust and collaboration between science and society than those of the century just passed.
So, as we ponder the possibilities of AI and quantum computing…
… the shape of the next pandemic …
… the security of our region …
… the impacts of climate change on food and water security, biodiversity, and weather …
… we look to our science agencies and research institutions to lead.
We look to them, to all of you, to help rebuild trust in our vital institutions.
I have made care a central focus of my term, and the more I reflect on it, the more it seems to me to encompass.
Care is complex and subtle, by no means a soft option.
And, in my mind, care for our civics, our institutions and the way we debate takes commitment and resolve.
The hard edge of care encompasses scholarship and rigour; it is accountable and measurable – a focus our new Chief Scientist, Professor Tony Haymet, has identified for his term.
We value your care for knowledge, and for the institutions that support it.
And we look for the new institutions, movements, bodies of knowledge, and kinds of collaboration that will help us thrive in an unknowable future.
I thank you for the journeys you all take across vast distances, step by patient step.
And, often, together collaborating with people from vastly different fields and experiences.
And thank you for the care and respect with which you carry and share the gift of knowledge with all Australians.
It is truly a privilege to be joining you all tonight, reflecting on and celebrating the 25 years of remarkable outcomes from Science Meets Parliament.