The Australian Academy of Science is disappointed with the Australian Parliament's decision to abolish the $4 billion Education Investment Fund.
Funding for emergency response and natural disaster recovery is clearly very important but it should not come at the expense of crucial long-term science & research infrastructure funding.
The abolition of the fund means a key long term and ongoing mechanism to support research infrastructure in Australia is now lost.
The Education Investment Fund has supported many transformative projects important to Australia’s national interest. Among them are the Square Kilometre Array Telescope, the Australian Synchrotron, a climate high performance computer capability at the National Computational Infrastructure and nuclear science facilities at ANSTO.
The abolition of the fund not only reduces Australia's capacity to be scientifically competitive in future, but also limits our ability to participate in future international big science projects.
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