"Science for Australia's Future" must be underpinned by a strong research workforce

The ATN is calling for a new visa category to be introduced by Australia; one which specifically targets a cohort of quality international research students and research-qualified immigrants so that they are attracted to Australian universities to study and then are retained to settle with their families as researchers in Australia.

Responding to the release of the ALP’s Science Policy – Science for Australia’s Future - ATN Chair, Professor Ross Milbourne acknowledged the commitment outlined in the policy to developing and growing our research workforce base as critical to building internationally significant science capability.

However, Professor Milbourne said urgent action was needed to address a critical shortage of researchers both for the private sector and for university teaching, as outlined in the ATN’s recently released position paper “Skill Build - Nation Build: Meeting Australia's research workforce needs.”

“It is not widely understood that Australia is running out of researchers and, as the Industry Minister acknowledged today, the nation’s expectations for our research community are high. Without them we cannot, as the Minister said, ‘cure the sick, feed the hungry or save the planet.’

“As one of the avenues by which the supply of researchers will be addressed, immigration requirements for international Higher Degree Research students and research-qualified graduates must be reviewed.

The ATN has written to both Government and Opposition outlining the issues confronting Australia as a result of a forecast skills shortage of researchers by 2012; researchers who can take more than five years to train.

“Given the timeframes involved, this is already a crisis. We know that to benefit Australia we must access a number of those high quality researchers from overseas,” Professor Milbourne said. “However currently, they have become caught up in the wider and more stringent policy push to crack down on access to permanent residency.

“Such students have become an unintended consequence of policy settings. We need them. Typically only 30% of them remain in Australia after their post graduate study. If no new visa category is introduced to quarantine them from our altered student visa restrictions, we are likely to find they do not come to Australia at all.

“That would be our loss – one we cannot economically afford. The United States and the United Kingdom are desperate for such students. We should be fighting to attract and retain them,” Professor Milbourne said.

Download the position paper