Digging another hole in our future

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There are wide­spread reports that the polit­i­cal fetish with return­ing the Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to a sur­plus will result in cuts to Aus­trali­a’s research fund­ing bud­get of close to half a bil­lion dol­lars:

Research cuts put lives at risk, say med­ical insti­tutes

Research cuts will cre­ate ‘brain drain’

These cuts are dri­ven by an obses­sion with run­ning a per­ma­nent bud­get sur­plus that is good pol­i­tics but bad eco­nom­ics. For Aus­tralia to con­sid­er achiev­ing this point­less goal by fur­ther under­min­ing its already pathet­ic lev­el of research fund­ing is even more insane.

Nor­mal­ly polit­i­cal­ly inac­tive researchers have final­ly had enough and are fight­ing back. The Wal­ter and Eliza Hall Insti­tute of Med­ical Research has estab­lished a protest move­ment “Dis­cov­er­ies Need Dol­lars”, and they are hold­ing a Ral­ly for Research in Mel­bourne next week:

RALLY FOR RESEARCH!

State Library of Victoria (Swanston St) — Tuesday 12 April @ 12:45–2PM

Moot­ed poli­cies like this show the wis­dom in Don­ald Horne’s often mis-quot­ed descrip­tion of Aus­tralia as “the lucky coun­try”:

Aus­tralia is a lucky coun­try, run by sec­ond-rate peo­ple who share its luck…

Aus­tralia showed less enter­prise than almost any oth­er pros­per­ous indus­tri­al soci­ety. (Don­ald Horne)

It’s time to tell the sec­ond-rate peo­ple think­ing of mak­ing insane deci­sions like this to back off. If you are in Mel­bourne, please attend the ral­ly, and sup­port the cam­paign.