Prime Minister Australia Malcolm Turnbull has said to build Australia into a country that invests in science and make this a preferred national agenda.
This he said at an awards ceremony for the nation’s leading scientists
The prime minister said he wanted to build an ecosystem in schools and universities that cherishes science. Turnbull handed out two $250,000 prizes at the prime minister’s prizes for science in Canberra on Wednesday night, including the first award for innovation in the history of the event.
Graham Farquhar, an Australian National University academic, won the prime minister’s prize for science for work that has changed our understanding of photosynthesis – the biological process that maintains life on Earth. He has also shed light on why evaporation rates and wind speeds around the world are slowing.
Graeme Jameson, of the University of Newcastle, took out the prize for innovation for creating a technology that produces trillions of bubbles that retrieve small coal particles. It is worth $26bn to the resources industry.
‘We have to be, and we will be, a country that invests in science and puts it right at the centre of our national agenda,’ Turnbull told the scientists at the parliament house awards dinner.
‘We play a critical role in getting the basic settings rights, we play a very important part but we can’t simply flick a switch to create an innovation nation. We have to fund targeted programs with a clear policy rationale.
‘It’s a great honour for me, not just to be prime minister, but to be your prime minister, to be the prime minister that says that science is right at the centre and the heart of our national agenda. Not just that, it’s at the heart and very centre of our future.”
