Robin Williams

Well, this is so important because we're actually here to talk about your Ambitious Australia report and so on and the action on it.

But here is yet another example of the way science works.

As you implied, a few years ago, that kind of approach wasn't there.

But science has tried things and got results.

And many people these days,

around Australia and around the world know about the way you can harness your immune system and live longer.

But now, back to the report, are you pleased with the reception it's had, even though it's quite new?

Yeah, but the politics of the day, necessarily these days even more so, is next week's shopping and the bills you have to pay immediately, not what happens with one generation, maybe two generations down the track.

Well, you've been reading another Minister of Science's reflections, Kim Carr, and a particular paragraph struck you.

What did that paragraph say?

I'm going to tell you a brief story and then we'll leave it for the time being, but I want to come back to you.

You mentioned John Howard, you mentioned the heart.

It just so happened when I came down from Oxford, I had a couple of fellowships and I landed at the end of the 90s when the ABC had had a 12% cut.

And I happened to write to the then minister, Peter McGoran, on the coalition side.

It just so happened that when Peter McGoran was appointed as the shadow, the minister, Barry Jones, took him aside and said,

The key to this is to go around the country to see where science is done, to visit the laboratories where people are doing it, and listen to them, see how it actually works, and see how science connects to the community.

In other words, you don't just see science as a distant thing remotely.

And Peter McGoran did that.

And when I went to see him, because of the problem with covering science with an enormous cut,

He listened.