Australia's Achilles heel

It may also be gravely under funded: is $300 million a suitable level of investment for a fast-growing $50 billion industry - when agriculture invests three times the sum in an industry worth half as much? The only strategic national areas where Australia invests less than in research than energy are education, transport and environmental policy.

We have national research investment plans for beef, wheat and dairying, for minerals, defence, water and land, for wine, racehorses, essential oils and honeybees.

We have a national research plan for macadamia nuts - but not for energy.

In this, the most critical area of all, the research policy is “she’ll be right”. The common view is “the Americans’ll fix it”. Would we tolerate the same approach to health research?

In energy R&D there is no sense of the big picture, no co-ordination, no way of backing the brilliant idea or discovery through to adoption, no vision for how to blend our prodigious fossil and renewable resources for the most advantageous outcomes. There is no plan for making promising but still-uneconomic sources (like solar thermal) viable through targeted R&D.

Every Australian home, every job, every workplace and industry, every social service, every vehicle and every scrap of food or glass of water depends on a secure supply of affordable energy.

The lack of a coherent research vision for Australia’s future energy supply is the nation’s Achilles heel.