Have your say: Published response
Published name
The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (the Academy) supports the draft priorities which reflect pressing challenges and opportunities facing Australia and require multidisciplinary research approaches. The priorities are consistent with the grand challenges identified in the Academy’s 2021 State of the Social Sciences Report.
The Academy looks forward to the finalisation of the priorities, and to opportunities to work with the Australian Government and other stakeholders to ensure the priorities are operationalised in a way that achieves meaningful and effective coordination of effort across Australia’s research ecosystem.
For the priorities identified in in the critical research paths to lead to societal impact and achieve the stated objectives and aims, the Academy recommends a greater emphasis on research into important enabling conditions, such as institutional settings, governance arrangements, and social and behavioural aspects of each priority area. Decisions and actions involve human behaviour. To enable and to ensure the critical research paths, emphasis has to include an understanding of human behaviour.
What this could look like in the final priorities:
Ensuring a net zero future and protecting Australia’s biodiversity
Ongoing developments in science, engineering and technology-related research fields will be critical to ensuring a net zero future. However, achieving the aim of reducing emissions at scale by developing emissions reduction and removal technologies that support restoring our environments (p.7) will require critical research paths focussed on navigating unintended or negative impacts of the transition and successfully harnessing the opportunity to transform our society, economy and industries. Substantial research in strategy, management, and psychology, for instance, indicates how perverse outcomes and unintended consequences can flow from well-intentioned policies.
Critical research paths:
• Social attitudes and drivers of equity and cohesion related to the deployment of emission reduction and removal technologies and associated infrastructure.
• Policies and regulations required to address the complexity of the energy transition across social, technical, and economic dimensions
• Mechanisms to support diverse Australian communities, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, to benefit from the transition
• Effective education approaches that support society’s knowledge of and response to the multiple threats of climate change and biodiversity loss.
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Supporting healthy and thriving communities
Healthy and thriving communities relates to concepts of the individual or how we live well and the collective or how we live well together. Achieving the aim of improving the physical, mental, and social wellbeing of all Australians (p. 9) will require critical research paths focussing on contextual factors of health and wellbeing as well as the rapid translation of research findings into health policy and practice. Substantial research in education and its relation to health, for instance, indicates the critical role of education in the general population in ensuring health and wellbeing of families.
Critical research paths:
• Supporting efficient and effective health policy, services and care, including the healthcare workforce and overall resilience of the healthcare system.
• Drivers of trust in emerging health technologies and techniques and their safe, ethical, and effective application
• Planning and design of communities, homes, learning environments and workplaces to promote physical and mental health
• Interventions to effectively reduce social and economic inequality and disadvantage
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Enabling a productive and innovative economy
As recognised in the draft priorities there are barriers holding back Australian invention, development, and adoption, like research translation challenges and accessing a skilled workforce (p. 11). Critical research paths to understand and address these barriers are of equal importance to the development of material and technologies themselves. This includes an expanded focus on enabling capabilities around education, workforce skilling and behavioural aspects of technology and digital transformations.
In addition, relevant research indicates that creating a culture of informed risk-taking is essential to an innovative economy. Establishing a risk-taking culture is an individual and organisational issue, and there is research that speaks to how it can be created, rather than individuals and companies retreating to a “more of the safe same” approach to productivity.
Critical research paths:
• Optimising Australia’s education and innovation systems for equity and improved outcomes
• Responses to emerging technology disruptions of labour structures and workforce skilling
• Understanding the perceptions, beliefs and barriers related to the adoption of new technology and implementation
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Building a stronger, more resilient nation
Australia has faced a series of crises in recent years, including the bushfires, COVID-19 pandemic and increasing geopolitical uncertainty in the Asia-Pacific region. Achieving the aim of support communities to develop the skills, tools and systems that can strengthen Australia’s democratic resilience and enhance trust (p. 13) will require critical research paths focussing on enhancing democratic participation, our national ability to prepare and manage crises and understanding and protecting against threats to democratic values. The notion of resilience is multilayered from individuals to communities, to institutions, to governments, and to a sense of national identity. Each of these levels, and their interrelationship need to be actively considered and research-informed actions need to be taken to achieve this priority.
Critical research paths:
• Methods to improve representation in public decision-making and workplaces especially by underrepresented groups such as women, young people and culturally and linguistically diverse people.
• Economic and social mechanisms to safeguard against crisis and lead to more resilient societies
• Implications of geopolitical uncertainty for Australian industry and policy making
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The Academy welcomes the intention to reflect First Nations knowledge and knowledge systems throughout the priorities. This sends a powerful signal to Australia’s research funding agencies to invest in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and perspectives across the research system. However, the reflection of these priorities is incomplete in the current critical research paths, and the Academy welcomes the commitment to further discussion and partnership with First Nations communities which is needed to ensure their expertise is integrated respectfully.