Science and Politics   Sunday May 2, 1999 3:00-5:00pm Member's Bar Old Parliament House, Canberra. Science in the PubTM ventures into political heritage when it takes its seat in Old Parliament House to check out whether science and politics ever meet. Our first session in Canberra has been commissioned for National Science Week and helped by funding from the Science and Technology Awareness Program. Although the science will be serious, there is sure to be lots of fun. Our panellists include Senator Kate Lundy, Shadow Minister assisting on Information Technology; Professor Martin Harwit, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy, Cornell University and former director of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, and Professor Snow Barlow, ex-Canberra bureaucrat and now Chair of Horticulture and Viticulture at The University of Melbourne. Martin Harwit was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia. When the Germans invaded in 1939, they found his family to be the wrong kind of people. Martin’s parents understood this and were able to quickly leave for Istanbul. There he was told that he was speaking the wrong languages—Czech and German—and was placed in a school to remedy this. Classes were taught in English in the mornings and Turkish in the afternoons. After the war ended, Martin was sent to the United States to get a proper education. He wanted to become a physicist. Martin explains, "In college I was a poor student. On graduation I could get no financial support for postgraduate studies. When I finally managed to get into graduate school I was soon told I had no talent for science and would not be able to earn a PhD. Having been thus discharged from graduate school, I was at once drafted into the army. After two years the army discharged me as well. With nothing else to do, I went back to get a PhD in physics, but then found I really wanted to become an astronomer." Desperate to learn astronomy, Martin started teaching it at Cornell University. After twenty-five years of that, he thought that he might be better at public teaching. He left the university to become director of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington where, after another eight years, he was once again discharged. "Fortunately my official bio says nothing about all this", Martin adds. "Otherwise the Australia National Telescope Facility might never have invited me to come visit, and that would have been a pity. I am having a great time here!" Martin’s ‘abstract in bad verse’ is … Speak out; be clear; Don’t give in to fear. Much of this deals with the notion that "everything can be settled by political debate, even scientific and historical truths." Kate Lundy became the youngest Labor representative in the Senate and the youngest woman ever elected to represent the ALP in Federal Parliament when, at age 28, she was elected Senator for the Australian Capital Territory in March 1996. In 1998 Kate was appointed Shadow Minister Assisting on Information Technology. Kate Lundy is the youngest woman shadow minister in Labor history. Kate began her working career as a 16-year-old labourer in the construction industry, becoming a workplace delegate and a full-time union organiser and, at 25, President of the ACT Trades and Labour Council. Kate is a member of several Parliamentary Committees, including the Senate Legislation and References Committees on Finance and Public Administration as well as the Senate Legislation and References Committees on Environment, Information Technology, Communications and the Arts. She is also a member of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Capital and External Territories and Presiding Officers’ Information Technology Advisory Committee. Kate is recognised for her involvement in IT and the Internet. In 1996 she was awarded ‘Most Computer Literate Politician’ by the Australian Computer Society and in 1998, was named as one of ‘The 20 Most Powerful Internet Decision Makers’ by internet. au magazine. Kate was the first federal politician in Australia to publish a home page on the world wide web, which she continues to personally maintain. Kate Lundy lives in North Canberra with her daughters, Alexandra, aged 8 and Annabelle, aged 4. Snow Barlow spent his formative youth in Banjo Paterson Country west of the Darling successfully avoiding schools until he was packed off to boarding school at age 12 to get a classical education! After a couple of years at The Armidale School it finally dawned on him that all the interesting careers seemed to involve Science and he began Science in earnest. After failing to reach his initial goal of being a Rugby International, Snow pursued a PhD in Soil Physics and Plant Physiology at Oregon State University while sharpening his skills teaching Rugby and coaching the Varsity team. During the time he was teaching Biological Sciences at Macquarie University , Snow became interested in and ultimately fascinated by this thing called Science Policy that shapes our careers. Acting on intuition rather than evidence he traced its source to Canberra and set about infiltrating it through a series of appointments to national committees, councils and corporations such as ARC Biological Sciences, Rural industries R&D and Land and Water Resources R&D Finally the centripetal forces of Canberra triumphed with Snow joining the Bureau of Resource Sciences(BRS), to provide Scientific advice on policy matters to the Minister and Department of Primary Industries and Energy. In this position Snow participated in international Greenhouse negotiations and had a key role in the initiation and organisation of the recent Consensus conference on ‘Gene Technology in the Food Chain’ Snow has recently demonstrated that it is possible to escape Canberra by accepting a chair of Horticulture and Viticulture at Melbourne University to lead the Department of Resource Management and Horticulture.
Science in the Pub™, © 2000. Stutchbury, R, Burton, M.