Book 8 - Parliament of Victoria

AUSTRALIAN SYNCHROTRON: FUNDING
1640 COUNCIL Wednesday, 1 June 2011
The failure of the government to commit to ongoing
funding for the synchrotron puts further pressure on
Victorian advanced manufacturing by potentially
depriving industry of one of the most important tools
available in the world for research and development.
The state budget provided no extra ongoing funds to a
facility that supports over 2500 scientists, has
120 highly skilled world-class scientists and is a source
of scientific discoveries of world significance.
Many of these scientists are not short of options. You
cannot play chicken with this facility, because many of
these scientists are highly qualified and highly
sought-after individuals. They are in demand; I would
not be surprised if they are on the radar of other
governments, other government agencies and
companies throughout the world. We cannot risk these
people going overseas. We talk about the brain drain in
this country. Headhunters would be after these people
as we speak if there were any sort of insecurity about
the synchrotron. I hope these people stick with us.
I hope the government eventually comes through with
the funding. Let us hope the government makes up its
mind to do that in a short period of time. We definitely
need leadership and responsibility in decisions from
this government. The honeymoon period is now well
and truly over. The government has been in
government for close to seven months, so it is time to
end the insecurity and accept some responsibility for
things like the synchrotron and indeed for Victoria’s
manufacturing sector.
I need to go back to basics in explaining why the
synchrotron is of vital importance to the future. The
synchrotron is a large machine that is around the size of
a football ground. The machine accelerates electrons to
almost the speed of light. As the electrons are deflected
through magnetic fields they create extremely bright
light. The light is then channelled down in what are
known as beamlines to experimental workstations
where it is used for research.
The synchrotron light advances research and
development in diverse fields. The electrons generated
in the centre of the synchrotron are accelerated to
almost the speed of light by the linear accelerator. The
electrons are then transferred to the booster ring, where
they are increased in energy and transferred to the outer
storage ring. The electrons are deflected through the
magnetic field created by the magnets, and at each
magnet a beam of synchrotron light is produced. I am
no expert on the details of using the synchrotron, but it
is important for members to have at least an elementary
knowledge of its operation to understand how the beam
of light can be used for a particular technique.
Our synchrotron is what is known as a third-generation
synchrotron. It is leading world technology using three
different light resources — namely, bending magnets,
multipole wigglers and undulators. It enables a wide
range of advanced experiments and measurements to be
carried out. We are equal to anywhere in the world.
That is now at risk due to a lack of understanding by the
Baillieu government. I am not suggesting that everyone
in the Baillieu government needs to understand the
intricacies of how the synchrotron works — that would
be a pretty tough call to make — but what we expect of
the Baillieu government is for it to have a conceptual
understanding of the importance of the synchrotron in
many fields, including innovation, productivity increase
and obviously the manufacturing sector.
Somewhat ironically the Honourable Gordon
Rich-Phillips had the task of launching MASSIVE, the
Multi-modal Australian ScienceS Imaging and
Visualisation Environment, where scientists will for the
first time be able to create, analyse, view and interact
with high-resolution three-dimensional samples of their
work in close to real time. Mr Rich-Phillips sang the
praises of MASSIVE in a press release, but the fact that
the project partner of MASSIVE was the Australian
Synchrotron is a great irony, and it sounds a touch
hypocritical to me.
The government has created a sense of great unease in
the scientific community. The government has put at
risk the state’s international reputation as a research and
innovation hub. There is no doubt that the Brumby
government provided a significant investment of
$157 million in capital, but for us to become the clever
country and be at the forefront of scientific
breakthroughs we have to invest in our future.
Having spoken at length about the Australian
Synchrotron, its inception, its functions and its
achievements, I now turn my attention briefly to the
state of Victoria’s manufacturing sector. I will then
conclude my contribution by discussing the importance
of innovation, and more particularly the synchrotron, to
the future of manufacturing in this state and in this
country. The Victorian manufacturing sector is going
through a pretty tough time at the moment with the
Australian dollar at historically high levels. As a result,
since March 849 jobs have been lost at Bosch, National
Foods, Ford Australia and Heinz alone. The Australian
Industry Group-PricewaterhouseCoopers Australian
performance of manufacturing index — otherwise
known as PMI — shows that manufacturing is in a state
of contraction.
I am a reasonable person, so I am prepared to concede
that the Minister for Manufacturing, Exports and Trade