Australia must have an ambitious research policy to underpin economic transformation

In a speech marking the 20th anniversary of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS), Kim Carr warns that Australia cannot build future prosperity on population growth, property and resource extraction alone – it must invest seriously in the scientific capability that drives innovation.

Australia is entering what Treasurer Jim Chalmers has described as a defining decade. The decisions we make now will shape our living standards, economic resilience and intergenerational prosperity for decades to come.

The recent strategic examination of research and development, Ambitious Australia, argues that Australia can no longer rely upon a neo-liberal economic model. Dependence on population growth, resource extraction and property expansion will not by themselves deliver the productivity, complexity and resilience needed for future prosperity.

Future growth will increasingly depend upon knowledge, innovation and technological capability. The SERD report reminds us that, since 1945, around three-quarters of global economic growth has been driven by technological advances.

Since 1990 most technological advances have emerged from fundamental scientific discovery. It is this insight that goes to the heart of why Australia’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy matters.

NCRIS is not simply a peripheral research program. It is a foundational investment that allows Australia to transform scientific knowledge into economic capability, industrial strength and social progress.

For 20 years it has quietly built the infrastructure that supports medical discoveries, advanced manufacturing, agricultural innovation, environmental management, digital technologies and emerging industries.

The SERD report makes another important point. Australia spends around $15 billion a year on the innovation system, yet investment remains fragmented across multiple programs and portfolios. Nor has Australia’s research budget kept pace with inflation. Funding is often spread too thinly and the system lacks sufficient general coordination and long-term direction.

NCRIS stands out precisely because it does the opposite. It provides a nationally coordinated framework for shared capability. It brings together Commonwealth investment, state government support, university resources and industry participation. It reduces duplication and creates infrastructure that serves the entire nation rather than individual institutions.

At a time when Australia is searching for ways to make innovation policy more effective, NCRIS offers a proven model of collaboration and strategic investment. If Ambitious Australia provides the national vision, NCRIS provides much of the practical capability needed to achieve it.

Around the world, nations are investing heavily in science, technology and research capability because they understand a simple truth: countries that build knowledge capacity today will shape economic prosperity, security and social wellbeing tomorrow.

The question before us is whether Australia will continue to act with confidence and ambition — or whether we will drift into short-termism at precisely the moment long-term national capability matters most.

This is why renewed funding commitments for the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy are so important.

For two decades, NCRIS has quietly become one of the most successful nation-building investments in modern Australia. It has enabled world-class research infrastructure in our universities, research agencies and scientific institutions. It has supported collaboration across states and territories. It has opened Australian researchers to international partnerships. And it has helped us tackle some of the greatest economic, industrial, health and environmental challenges of our time.

Importantly, NCRIS is not simply a science program. It is a national capability program. It underpins medical breakthroughs.
It strengthens advanced manufacturing.
It supports defence and strategic technologies.
It enables climate and environmental research.
It builds digital capability.
And it trains the highly skilled workforce Australia will increasingly depend upon.

In many ways, NCRIS represents patient national investment at its best. The benefits do not always appear in a single budget cycle. They emerge over years and decades through new industries, better health outcomes, higher productivity, stronger sovereign capability and better public policy.

This is the essence of nation building. And nation building requires continuity.

Since its establishment in 2006, NCRIS has provided around $5 billion in support for nationally significant research infrastructure. Today it funds 26 facilities and supports participation in major international infrastructure collaborations. These facilities are not isolated laboratories. They are shared national assets accessible to publicly and privately funded researchers across Australia and internationally.

The Commonwealth provides national coordination and core funding.
State governments contribute infrastructure and investment.
Universities provide facilities, expertise and co-investment.
Industry increasingly participates through collaborative research and commercial partnerships.

This collaborative model has been one of NCRIS’s great strengths because the nature of science itself is changing. Modern research increasingly depends upon large-scale data systems, computational capacity, shared platforms, multidisciplinary collaboration and international connectivity.

Scientific infrastructure is no longer simply physical infrastructure. It is also digital, distributed and global. Australia cannot compete internationally if our infrastructure investment framework stands still while technology moves ahead rapidly. The challenge now is ensuring funding certainty and strategic continuity.

The current funding framework includes substantial Commonwealth investment extending to 2028–29. However, many stakeholders are rightly concerned about what happens after that point. Funding agreements for existing facilities conclude in 2028.

This emerging funding cliff creates uncertainty for:

• researchers
• technical specialists
• universities
• industry collaborators
• and international partners.

And uncertainty is damaging in research infrastructure.

Scientific capability cannot simply be turned on and off. Highly skilled workforces take years to build.
International partnerships require reliability.
Advanced facilities require long-term maintenance and upgrading.
Research programs depend on continuity.

If Australia allows capability erosion through stop-start funding cycles, rebuilding capacity later becomes vastly more expensive. This is why long-term patient investment matters.

It is also why real funding levels matter. While NCRIS funding has generally trended upward over time, it has not always done so smoothly. Inflationary pressures, rapidly rising technology costs and increasing international competition mean maintaining capability requires more than nominal continuity.

The question is not simply whether funding exists. The question is whether Australia is maintaining capability in real term. That challenge applies across the entire research infrastructure ecosystem.

Research infrastructure is not peripheral to economic policy. Around the world, the countries succeeding in advanced industries are those making sustained public investments in research capability, technological capacity and human capital.

Australia cannot afford complacency. We are a nation with extraordinary scientific talent; however, talent alone is not enough. Researchers require access to world-class infrastructure, long-term institutional stability and strategic national ambition.

The SERD report warns that future generations face declining living-standard growth unless Australia undertakes bold reforms. That warning should not be ignored.

The question is not whether Australia can afford to invest in research infrastructure. The real question is whether Australia can afford not to.

The IMF has found that research and development investment generates deeper and more enduring productivity gains than many other forms of investment.

NCRIS represents exactly the kind of patient, strategic investment required to build a more productive, innovative and resilient country. The challenge before government is not merely to preserve NCRIS beyond 2028. It is time to place NCRIS at the centre of a broader national strategy for economic transformation.

If Australia is serious about becoming the ambitious nation described in the SERD report, then we must be equally serious about investing in the capabilities that make that ambition possible.