Rio Tinto Big Science Awards 2009: National presentation
Senator the Hon Kim Carr
Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research
18 August 2009
The Australian National University
Canberra
"To Australian Science Innovations, ANU and Rio Tinto - thanks for supporting science education.
To our winners from around the country – congratulations on your perfect scores. You clearly have a gift and a passion for science, and I hope you will stick with it at high school and at university.
Studying science doesn't just teach us facts about the world. It teaches us how to think. That's why I believe it is good for all Australians to learn more about science and its methods. This is part of what it means to be an informed citizen.
At the same time, we need people who are really good at science – people like you – to make it their career.
That's why Commonwealth is:
- building and upgrading hundreds of high school science labs around the country
- halving HECS fees for new maths and science students
- halving the HECS repayments of graduates who take up science-related jobs for up to five years
- doubling the number of Commonwealth Scholarships and Australian Postgraduate Awards
- increasing the value of postgraduate awards by more than 10 per cent
- creating Super Science Fellowships, Future Fellowships, and Australian Laureate Fellowships for researchers at different stages of their careers, and
- investing $1.1 billion in a new Super Science Initiative to boost capacity and build on our strengths.
Your school experience has already given you a glimpse of the rich rewards a life in science
can offer. Those rewards include the real possibility of making an enduring contribution to
humankind.
Now that you are used to being winners, you might set your sights on the Prime Minister's Science Prize.
Past recipients include:
- Ian Frazer, inventor of the world's first anti-cancer vaccine, and
- Graeme Clark, inventor of the bionic ear."
