By GREG ANSLEY
CANBERRA - Condemnation of New Zealand's miserly science budget has echoes in complaints of underfunding across the Tasman - despite the much larger share of national wealth channelled to research in Australia.
In a speech underlining the widening knowledge gap between New Zealand and the rest of the world, Dr Bryan Gaensler, the Young Australian of the Year, said he would be "absolutely insane" to return down under to work.
Dr Gaensler, a first-class physics graduate from Sydney University now on a Hubble Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the National Press Club that the future of science in Australia was bleak unless funding was urgently addressed.
"Money is not what drives scientists, but you are making a huge sacrifice to come back to Australia," he said. "We have reached that point where the idea of the clever country is not a source of inspiration. It is really tinged with irony about what may have been."
Dr Gaensler's remarks followed similar complaints by 20 expatriate New Zealand researchers, who singled out for criticism the Government's "shortsighted" Bright Future scholarships and low research funding.
But his speech had added transtasman force because of the much larger science budget in Australia.
According to figures provided by New Zealand Tertiary Education Minister Max Bradford, the Government spent about $650 million a year on science, more than $100 million of this on university research and development programmes.
Across the Tasman, the most recent comparative figures show that in 1996-97 total spending on science in Australia ran at $A8.7 billion ($10.8 billion).
Government funding amounted to $A1.8 billion - about one quarter of the total - with universities contributing 27 per cent and the rest coming from business.
Australia spends the equivalent of 1.68 per cent of gross domestic product on research and development, below the average of 1.86 per cent of GDP for the world's 24 wealthiest countries, and ranking 12th in the list.
New Zealand spends 0.97 per cent of GDP and ranks bottom.
In May's federal Budget, Australia also earmarked $A800 million more for science programmes of up to six years and spread across medical institutions, universities, research agencies and private industry.
Research gripes across Tasman
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