Dr. Shane Huntington

This is an interesting question because I think what you have to do is put it in the context of what it used to be like as well.

So back in my day, if I can use that phrase, I remember having to compete with usually about three other researchers to get my funding.

So the success rate was about 25%.

Today, that number would be 10 or 11 researchers.

So you would have to beat 10 or 11 other excellent people to get your funding.

So even just that metric alone in the space of 20 years has changed in a really phenomenal way.

We also see the amount of investment we have as a proportion of GDP has just dropped like a stone.

So it seemed to be peaking out at about 2008.

I think it was over about 2.2%.

It's now, I think it's under 1.7%.

And that's a huge change.

It also means that we are lagging behind all the other OHCD countries in quite a major way.

We're going down.

We're not going up.

We're going down exactly the time when we should be heading in the other direction.

I think Australia has an incredible system of producing great researchers, but sometimes that comes from adversity.

It doesn't always come from us having a nice cushy environment to work in.

We have great people.

We have inventive people.

We've seen that over the years, but you don't get a free ticket