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Science academy says Australia cannot afford to “wait and see”
Australian Academy of Science president Chennupati Jagadish has said Australia needs to rethink its reliance on the US.
On 31 March, Jagadish said that while “the US is Australia’s largest research partner and the benefits of collaboration are mutual”, Australia needs to be prepared for weakened American support.
The academy is calling on the government to “systematically assess our reliance on US-funded R&D capability, rather than take a wait-and-see approach”.
In recent weeks, Australian researchers have had US funding cut or paused and have been sent US ‘surveys’ on their links to China and their focus on diversity and other issues.
According to academy figures, “in 2024 alone, US government research funding involving Australian research organisations totalled A$386 million”.
Key collaborations included vaccine, weather observation and strategic defence capability work, Jagadish said.
“It is easy to see how embedded research and development capability is in our everyday lives. It is for these reasons we have been calling for a coordinated, cross-portfolio assessment of risk should collaboration with the US weaken, so we can be as prepared as possible for an uncertain future.”
‘Just the beginning’
Jagadish warned that the recent cuts are “likely to be just the beginning of very turbulent times for the research and development sector due to the unpredictability of [US president Donald Trump’s] administration”.
The impacts of America’s funding decisions may go beyond the direct flow of money. In an article for the Conversation news website on 17 March, Southern Cross University law lecturer Brendan Walker-Munro suggested that as researchers leave the US due to internal funding cuts, they may attract the interest of nations such as China and Russia, posing a potential security threat.
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