Belinda Smith

Yeah, the path to research success is littered with the careers of postdocs and lab heads and people who have not been able to get funding.

It just seems wild to me that we have $24 billion sitting in the bank accruing all this interest and yet people are leaving research in droves, something like more than half of researchers left active research between 2019 and 2024.

Federal Science Minister Tim Ayres came into the studio for a chat about the future of Australian research and he heard her statement.

What's your reaction to that?

Well, 20 years ago, the success rates were more like a quarter to a third.

Now it's single digits.

And as a result, a lot of the successful grant applications are from big established labs that show they can do the work.

They've got the publications behind them.

They've got the clout.

And so what we see is loads of young people leaving medical research or just research in general.

The Australian Health and Medical Research Workforce Audit found that more than 60% of researchers left active research between 2019 and 2024.

So in terms of that, what concrete steps are being taken to stop the flow of people, mostly young people, leaving research or just taking their stuff overseas and going to where the money is like Europe?

You said there wasn't going to be a policy panacea presented to us on the Sight Show today, but what would be the obvious things that you could do, not just over the next years, but I'm talking maybe the next 12 months?

Or just get something rolling.

You heard Professor Ravenscroft there, the despair in her voice.

You said before that the government has responsibility to fund science and research in Australia and said earlier this month that it would prioritise investments in science and research that would generate tangible commercial outcomes.

But the thing is, we can't predict these things.

A lot of the technology that we use came from blue sky or fundamental research.

So how do you plan to support that fundamental research?

If one of your kids came to you and said, I want to be a research scientist, what would you say?