Research facilities and medicine were among the winners for science in Australia's 2018–19 national budget, which was proposed on Tuesday.
The government will push to invest almost Aus$1.9 billion (US$1.4 billion) over the next 12 years in shared research infrastructure — such as microscopes, supercomputers, a marine observing system and telescopes used in myriad disciplines, from nanotechnology to oceanography. The new money is in addition to the $2.2 billion-plus that the government committed to spend on research facilities and programmes over 10 years, announced in December 2015.
“We’re pretty excited about that,” says Kylie Walker, chief executive of Science & Technology Australia in Canberra, an umbrella organization of scientific societies that represent a combined 70,000 researchers.
Medical research will receive an increase of $1.3 billion, to be spent on various programmes and initiatives over 10 years that improve health and boost the medical industry, including $500 million for a genomics and precision-medicine initiative. The government currently spends about $1.2 billion on medical research a year, according to the Australian Academy of Science.
