David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week, during Science Meets Parliament 2026, many of us had the privilege of meeting with scientists and researchers in what I understand was a record number of 100 meetings between scientists and parliamentarians as part of this year's event. Australia's scientists and researchers are a huge part of what truly makes us the lucky country.

Last Wednesday the Minister for Science told the National Press Club that we must invest in our people and our prospects. We need this government to match those words with money—money to save jobs at the CSIRO, not just money for jobs at steelworks and aluminium smelters; money to invest in research for the public good, not just money for research that can be commercialised; money to build our STEM workforce and ensure its diversity rather than ripping funds out of programs or letting others from the STEM academy elevate scholars to fall off a funding cliff. We need to invest not just in our sovereign manufacturing capability but our sovereign scientific capability. That means serious new investments in our science research infrastructure, from a new synchrotron to telescopes.

At the end of last year some of Australia's smartest people handed the government a road map on how to do that—Ambitious Australia, the outcome of the SERD report fought for by former science minister Ed Husic. Now that the report has been released, we need to see it responded to—and don't tell me that we can't afford it while we are happy to give away so much of our gas for free. If we are to be the lucky country in the future, we need investment in research in this country as a matter of urgency and as a matter of priority from the Albanese Labor government.