Here’s one for the political tragics: which party in Australia’s history has built and backed more of our science and public research institutions than any other? Answer — the Australian Labor Party.
From Ben Chifley’s decision to turn the fledgling CSIR into the CSIRO in 1949, to Roger Cook’s recent push for a Future Health Research Hub, Labor has treated science like a favourite child — one it knows must be fed, funded, and defended if it’s to keep delivering breakthroughs in the national interest. Labor’s instinct has always been to corral public institutions, private innovators, and universities into the same paddock and fatten them up until they produce results the private sector can’t or won’t deliver.
And it’s worked. The roll call of outcomes is long and impressive: Wi-Fi, polymer banknotes, Aerogard, the Hendra virus vaccine, world-leading satellite mapping, and deep-space astronomy. All share the same origin story — government seed capital, sustained collaboration, and the political will to keep the tap running until the job is done. From agriculture and minerals to marine science, defence, and health, Labor’s model of publicly-backed, multi-party collaboration has transformed entire industries and left behind institutions so valuable that even Coalition governments keep building on them.
Looking back over the collaborative science institutions Labor has built or supercharged shows just how deep this legacy runs. Federally, the Hawke Government passed the National Health and Medical Research Council Act in 1987, locking in Australia’s peak body for funding medical research. Agriculture Minister John Kerin launched the 15 Rural Research and Development Corporations — GRDC, MLA and the rest — blending producer levies with Commonwealth co-funding to drive grains, livestock, and horticultural innovation. Barry Jones rolled out the Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) Program in 1990, now home to 30 CRCs tackling everything from honey bee health to antimicrobial resistance in livestock. John Dawkins’ higher-education reforms cemented the Australian Research Council as the permanent competitive grants engine for universities.
Here in WA, the same Labor hallmark is easy to spot. The McGowan Government seeded the WA Agricultural Research Collaboration (WAARC) in 2022 with $25 million, uniting DPIRD, CSIRO, UWA, Curtin, Murdoch, ECU and grower groups under a single agriscience strategy. The Gallop Government backed the Grower Group Alliance (GGA) in 2002, now linking more than 80 grassroots groups to get R&D off the whiteboard and into the paddock. Alan Carpenter’s government created the Western Australian Marine Science Institution (WAMSI) in 2006, delivering the $30 million Kimberley and $13.5 million Westport marine research programs. The McGowan-era Future Health Research & Innovation Fund, legislated in 2020, is now a $1.8 billion sovereign health R&D fund with $260 million already awarded. And the Cook Government’s $11.5 million commitment to the Floreat Biomedical Research Precinct will flow into a pipeline that’s already invested $173 million across more than 600 projects, with $250 million more coming in the next four years.
Some of these institutions began under Labor and were later expanded or rebadged by Coalition governments — proof that when Labor lays the foundations, even its opponents keep building. MERIWA, launched by Brian Burke in 1987, was reshaped into MRIWA under Colin Barnett and has since spent $76 million on projects. The International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) came into being during Barnett’s tenure but has just received $25 million more from the Cook Government in 2024. From Chifley’s CSIRO to Cook’s latest astronomy investments, the through-line is unmistakable: Labor governments create science institutions that become national assets, and once they’re up, they attract bipartisan respect — because they work.
Which is why the current WA Agriculture Minister’s approach makes no sense. In the middle of this rich, bipartisan tradition of building science infrastructure, she’s pulling bricks out of the wall. Funding is being stripped from AEGIC — the very body that helps market most of Australia’s grain, grain that overwhelmingly comes out of WA — and from the GGA, the state’s main bridge between researchers and the paddock. WAARC, meanwhile, is left in limbo, its next three-to-four-year funding decision kicked down the road because it wasn’t deemed a “priority” heading into the election.
This is not tinkering — it’s undermining the very structures that embody Labor’s own research DNA. Labor giants like Kerin, Dawkins, Carr, and yes, even dare I say it MacTiernan, understood that corralling the “pointy heads” into coordinated projects is the surest way to deliver public benefit from the kind of science the private sector won’t touch. Tear these hubs down or starve them mid-cycle and you don’t just waste sunk costs — you blow up the relationships with federal agencies, industry partners, and the sectors they serve.
One suspects that the root cause is the Minister does not understand how science works? Let me help her. You start with an idea, hustle for funding, match every dollar you can, run the experiments, gather the data, refine the question, and go again — together. Across disciplines, across institutions, with funding that’s actually coordinated. Cut one link in that chain and you don’t just slow things down; you scatter the knowledge, kill the trust, and set progress back years.
If she’s happy to light that bonfire, she should at least admit she’s not just burning science — she’s torching the political capital generations of her own Labor predecessors spent decades banking.
And here’s the kicker — the Premier’s own words make her position look even shakier. Roger Cook has no trouble talking up science when the cameras are rolling. His media releases are peppered with lines about “whole-of-sector collaboration” and “bringing research to market faster.” He’s praised the Future Health Research Institute for “positioning our State as a leader in vital research and innovation” and assured the public that WA is in “a safe pair of hands” when it comes to unlocking science and technology potential.
But in agriculture? His Minister is walking away from AEGIC — the one body built to keep WA grain competitive on the global stage — and from the GGA, which took over extension work precisely because previous ministers couldn’t fund it properly inside the old Ag Department. What’s the point of doing cutting-edge science on grain production and processing if the very institutions designed to get those results into the market are left to wither?
Sure, the Minister can demand they “stand on their own two feet” — but go tell that to industry while writing cheques to farmers markets. Instead of backing the institutions that actually deliver commercial outcomes, she’s busy talking up $500,000 in carbon voucher handouts for farmers, and $2.2 million for kids to go to the Royal Show. Adding to the growing list of political feel-good photo ops, but they don’t keep WA competitive when the rest of the country is sharpening its research tools.
And the timing could not be worse. The GRDC-commissioned ACIL Allen report has just recommended spending every last dollar of the $600 million in reserves — a once-in-a-generation war chest for “moonshot” agricultural science. Put aside the serious argument about whether that money should have stayed in growers’ pockets, be returned to growers, or used to drop the existing levy for the next decade. The reality is, every other state’s grains research body is already circling like vultures, parading their well-governed, multi-party collaborations in front of GRDC like show ponies — all fully backed by their agriculture ministers who understand the value of being seen to support science when there’s a deep trough to feed from.
Here in WA, we should be leading the charge. If DPIRD, WAARC, AEGIC, and the GGA had security of funding — not just in promises but with real dollars written into the budget — we’d be in the box seat to claim a serious slice of that $600 million. Instead, we’re watching them be starved apart, bit by bit, while the eastern states position themselves to funnel those millions into research on sorghum, chickpeas, faba beans, and lentils… all on their soils, not ours.
Yes, GGA has its critics. So do AEGIC and WAARC. But the same could be said of almost every collaborative body Labor has ever built — and most of them delivered far more than their detractors predicted. The Minister now owes an answer: how exactly does she expect these organisations to compete, grow, and attract matching funds in an increasingly cut-throat science-funding market without DPIRD backing? Or is she simply not interested in science or has some other ideas?
Surely, she’s not betting on reviving the old Ag Department research division — a once-proud outfit that this government, like every other for the past 30 years, has steadily downsized. In fact, the Minister herself has signed off on further future cuts: Regional Technical Development is set to collapse from $110 million last year to $62 million in 2028-29, with Regional Skills and Knowledge Development dropping from $79 million to $55 million.
And spare me the claims that “there’s nothing to worry about, Treasury always comes to the party.” History tells us that’s not the case. It’s no secret Treasury is doing yet another deep dive into DPIRD — I suspect because the penny has finally dropped that the cuts are too deep to be absorbed, and if more funds aren’t found, staff will be forced to walk the plank.
This all falls at the feet of the current Minister. Having failed to prise a single extra dollar from Treasury, she’s now presiding over cuts that begin by chopping down the collaborative science platforms her own Labor predecessors spent decades building. Inside DPIRD, they know exactly what this is: a slow-motion demolition job.
As for any backlash? Don’t expect it from DPIRD’s executive. They’re so paralysed with fear of giving the Minister some frank and fearless advice that all is not well within the department that a visit to Dumas House has become like briefing Putin in the Kremlin on the Ukraine war. No matter how many divisions have been wiped out, the message is always the same: the advance is going exactly to plan, the enemy is on the run, and any talk of retreat is just Western propaganda. Swap “Putin” for “Jarvis” and “Western” for “WAFarmers” and you’ve got the picture. Meanwhile, back in the field, the research budget’s in tatters, the supply lines are cut, and the surviving troops are being told to go begging yet again to GRDC for some fuel for the drones.
After years of budget amputations and a headlong dive down the progressive DEI rabbit hole, the place is so shell-shocked that the only PhDs they seem to hire now are in clinical psychology — presumably to help staff cope with the trauma of watching their research capacity mothballed, one cost-cutting review by Treasury at a time.
But sooner or later, the rumblings of rebelling from the DPIRD staff will reach the Premiers office and the universities and grower groups will start making some noise — particularly if the flood of GRDC money doesn’t come back home to where it was grown.
At some point, the Premier and the Minister will have to explain why agriculture is the only portfolio moving in the opposite direction to WA’s broader science investment strategy. It’s a contradiction that will be impossible to hide once the ivory towers and the back paddocks start singing from the same hymn sheet.
Labor’s legacy in science policy is one of building, connecting, and amplifying. This Minister’s trajectory? Dismantling, isolating, and narrowing while rounding on anyone who points out that the ship is sinking. It’s not just out of step with her own government — it runs against her party’s proudest tradition. If funding isn’t restored to AEGIC and GGA, if WAARC’s future isn’t secured, and if DPIRD’s research division isn’t strengthened by plugging the hole in the forward estimates, the legacy she leaves will be one of contraction, and loss of state credibility — and that’s a reputation no Premier will leave unaddressed.
If I were her, I’d be marching into Cabinet like her predecessor and demanding more money for science — a lot more, like $200m over four years more. Failing that, or if that fails, I’d be agitating to jump ship into another portfolio before the whole thing sinks. Either way, rest assured I’ll be keeping you informed of her progress to plug the holes… or lack of it. Next update mid year budget review.
