The New Alchemy

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday March 4, 2006

Stephanie Peatling

Jim Peacock deals in facts and can't wait to present the Government with the latest on nuclear power and genetically modified food. Stephanie Peatling reports.

BRUNONIA Australis is a striking plant. Clusters of bright-blue flowers spring half a metre or so into the air, waving to the sun from above rosettes of leaves. Any weekend bushwalker would be likely to see the plants they probably know as blue pincushions.

But not many people would have fallen in love with the plant the same way Jim Peacock did. Australia's new Chief Scientist was smitten as soon as he looked at the plant through the lens of a microscope in the early 1960s. "When you look at the chromosomes inside the cells, they're just beautiful," he says. "They are a good size and ... to some people they are exquisite."

Not only were they visually tantalising, they made the then doctoral student think: "If I could only get down inside that microscope and get inside the cell I'm looking at I'd be able to watch the genes working."

Now he says: "That was in 1962 and it was in my imagination and I can still hardly believe now that we can not only look at a gene, we can isolate it, we can read its DNA sequence and, to a very large extent, understand how it's copied."

The man who once thought he would become a high-school science teacher had been seduced by research.

The field of molecular genetics would lead him to become the longest-serving chief of the CSIRO Plant Industry division, make him a companion of the Order of Australia - Australia's highest honour - and garner him the first Prime Minister's Science Prize.

His work on cotton involved inserting three extra genes into its unit genome - or what he calls its "biological software" - making the crop more resistant to herbicides and pests such as moths. This virtually saved the cotton industry.

It might not win him any praise from environment groups - which remain wary of genetically modified organisms and the high water demands of cotton - but it is exactly the sort of research the Federal Government likes. It is not just research for the sake of it. It is useful and, best of all, it has a commercial application.

Announcing Peacock's appointment earlier this week, the Minister for Science, Julie Bishop, stressed the importance of "commercial benefit from public-sector research".

"We need to ensure that our research institutions and the universities interact with industry and the wider community in a sustained and mutually productive manner," Bishop said.

The role of the Chief Scientist, she said, was to "build effective partnerships between government, researchers and industry to maximise the substantial investment being made by government and to ensure that ideas move smoothly from generation to end use".

The Government will be hearing a lot about climate change and genetically modified organisms. Given Peacock's research history, his support for genetically modified organisms is not surprising. He believes the various moratoriums on genetically modified canola are unjustified and are partly a failure by scientists to adequately explain the situation.

The basis of many of the plants people rely on for food, such as wheat, rice and maize, have barely changed for thousands of years, which means they are "not really as optimum as they could be for human nutrition", he says. "There's very good data to show that by adjusting the make-up of starch in plants and changing the glycaemic index, we're likely to be able to contribute to preventive medicine, to the maintenance of health, to avoid large incidences of diabetes, for example.

"It's not enough just to say everyone on this earth has the right to enough food. We need to say everyone has the right to enough good food; food that's good for your health."

He also supports plans to commission a paper on the pluses and minuses of a domestic nuclear energy industry. "It's hardly fair to try to talk about this with the Australian public if we haven't presented an up-to-date factual account. Things are different to the Australia of the late 1950s, when there was a strong feeling against nuclear. The public has to be treated fair and square. And so do the politicians. That's where I come in."

Peacock's position also comes with a controversial recent history. The job had been vacant for 288 days, the Opposition noted; Robin Batterham resigned last May.

Batterham split his time between his government job in Canberra and his position of chief technologist for the mining giant Rio Tinto in Melbourne. The Opposition and the Greens pursued him over a perceived conflict of interest between the roles, and because of his taxpayer-funded travel expenses of about $500 a day.

Batterham's double life was a bad look for a Government trying to defend itself against claims by environment groups and many scientists that its energy policies favour greenhouse gas-intense industries, such as coal, and stifle emerging alternatives, such as wind and solar.

Peacock says his predecessor - the two served together on the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council - was "impeccable".

He denies there is a problem with one person serving two masters - Peacock's other master will continue to be CSIRO Plant Industry. "This is a public research institution, and even if there were situations that were dealing with CSIRO I certainly can deal at arm's length," he says.

He adds that Australia's relatively small size means people often have to do more than one job at a time.

He is convinced his new job will be to put the scientific facts in front of the Government and not to make suggestions about policy.

"I've always been careful to talk about the scientific facts and to use those facts to try to make some analysis," Peacock says. "I think that's what scientists are there for. It's not our role to go in and say we'll increase taxes, or whatever the policy is."

Other scientists are less sure the Government can be trusted to act with the urgency the research on climate change, in particular, demands.

John Williams, a member of the Wentworth Group of scientists and the former chief of CSIRO Land and Water, says climate change is the most "acute" issue confronting Australia because it drives everything from water to rivers to biodiversity to energy use.

"We must recognise how to manage the impacts of climate change, particularly its impact on water resources," he says. "How are we going to manage our water in cities and towns? How will it affect our approach to irrigation?"

It is no longer enough, he says, for scientists to simply present the facts to government. "The tradition of science is we analyse things and pull them apart, but, with this one [climate change], society needs us to put it back together.

"The science and policy interface is where the action is. It's no good saying, here's science and over there is policy ... Science and values and science and society have come together and we have to learn how to do that in an open and transparent way. And we don't do that at the moment."

While scientists do not need to make policy for the government, Williams says, a "mature government" should be able to cope with strong, independent policy contributions.

© 2006 Sydney Morning Herald

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