On 9 July 2025, Professor Tony Haymet delivered a keynote speech at the Connecting Continents - Research Dialogue with Europe event.
Good morning, everyone.
Welcome, and a special welcome to those of you from overseas.
And could I add my acknowledgements to the Traditional Owners of the lands on which we are meeting: the Ngunnawal people.
I pay my respects to their elders past and present. And I recognise how those elders have passed on their knowledge from generation to generation.
Thank you, Oliver, from the EU delegation to Australia, for your remarks. It’s a great pleasure to thank all the Europeans who’ve formed my scientific career and the collaborations which have led to a prosperous and successful Australia.
I acknowledge our esteemed guests - from the EU delegation and the embassies of France, Germany and Italy - and all the other people who are here.
It’s my very great pleasure to welcome Signe Ratso here and my fellow scientists.
So, I’m going to say what may seem to be platitudes for the next 12 minutes. As they say – everything’s been said but not everyone’s had a chance to say it. So, let me take my chance.
***
Looking back on my life, the shelves of my primary school library in Lane Cove, then a modest suburb of Sydney, and the public library right next door, were full of romanticised stories, sometimes true, celebrating the heroics of great scientific individuals. Figures whose singular vision, and apparently single-handed work, led to great scientific breakthroughs.
But the library books of today present a more balanced and accurate view.
They reflect what my older self knows and what you also know:
that nearly all innovation relies on collaboration
because science is a team sport …
and so often, a global one.
And that’s why we gather here today.
***
In this speech I’d like to explore the global nature of our endeavours.
And I’d like to consider the synergies underpinning our past collaborations and how they can guide us towards a shared future during a period of significant world change.
***
Like you, science has taken me around the world.
Luckily, my childhood love of science flourished and I have worked in chemistry and oceanography for decades in Australia and overseas.
Like you, I learned that:
• world-leading science is very often international science
• that global partnerships extend our reach and our capability
• and that no country can go it alone when tackling global challenges. They are now too big and too complex – and we can’t solve them in silos.
Among my many international collaborators, may I take a moment to acknowledge Professors Myroslav Holovko, and my former postdoc, now Director, Taras Bryk from the Institute for Condensed Matter Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Lviv. We met by reading each other’s papers and then corresponding; that’s how science happens. When I first visited, Lviv was still part of the Soviet Union, and western Ukraine was forced to be on a very strange time zone. The Director of that Institute, who I think had built it up over decades, was the very wise Professor Ihor Yukhnovskii, who after a stellar scientific career, was elected to the Ukrainian Parliament on 30 March 1990. And for a few months from October 1992 he was First Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine. They have been my most brilliant and constant collaborators, and I am very upset about the life that they are now forced to lead. And may I thank everyone in Europe for their constancy in their support of Ukraine.
***
The world is experiencing significant change, as you know, and my colleagues in Lviv know, only too well.
That’s why events like today matter. Forums like this deepen our understanding of the opportunities and priorities in science and innovation in our different regions. That awareness can foster more targeted and beneficial collaborations that build on our long relationships that are also long-distance ones.
***
Last month we marked the 31st anniversary of the EU-Australia Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement.
That signing was very significant: the EU’s first treaty-level science and tech agreement with an industrialised country outside Europe.
And the statistics show how it’s gone from strength to strength!
In the first 10 years of the agreement, just 7% of our research publications had an EU co-author.
In the last 10 years, that has risen to almost 18%. And in that period, about 33% of Australian papers with an international collaborator have had an EU collaborator.
So, when it comes to research, Australians are small in number but we make a big impact – and we enjoy working with the EU and your agencies.
The EU has been Australia’s top scientific partner for over three decades, with close to 17,000 co-publications last year alone. Australia is the EU’s 6th largest non-EU collaborator… and the EU is Australia’s greatest collaborator.
***
Those impressive numbers are underpinned by our common values and a mutual trust and belief in science.
We share a cultural and academic proximity that supersedes the distance that separates us.
Those shared values make us a good fit for EU collaboration. They always have. They always will.
Our researchers are highly sought after worldwide, with more than a dozen Nobel laureates attesting to our scientific contributions at a global level.
And I think we’re great collaborators when it comes to translating scientific discoveries into game-changing, real-world innovations. And let me mention a few:
• Wi-Fi
• the black box flight recorder, now orange
• the Cochlear hearing implant
• and the cervical cancer vaccine, Gardasil.
***
Our collaborative research is so often underpinned by the personal and cultural connections of our researchers.
That’s why over the decades we have fostered regular mobility between Europe and Australia.
And we hope those connections are enhanced by Australia’s vibrant multicultural society.
High numbers of our post-grad researchers are international students.
And high numbers of our top researchers were born overseas; many here today.
In addition, high numbers of Australians are working in Europe and elsewhere, tapping into global networks to address some of the greatest challenges we face.
***
But when it comes to collaboration, we’re not just book smart.
We recognise that academic freedom requires an acute awareness of potential security threats, especially where it relates to emerging technologies.
Embedding research security as a foundation of future Australia-Europe research collaboration is more important than ever. Australia has a range of initiatives to identify and mitigate security risks. This includes the University Foreign Interference Taskforce that brings together the university sector and the Australian Government.
In short ... when you engage in research with Australia, you engage with a country that is aware of those threats and the need to anticipate and mitigate them.
***
In this speech I am discussing, broadly, international research collaboration, especially where it involves Australia and Europe.
And as part of that, I want to touch for a moment on Horizon Europe in particular.
As you know, Australia is currently involved in Horizon Europe as a Third Country Participant – meaning our researchers and businesses fund their own involvement in Horizon Europe research calls.
I’m aware, as we all are, that the EU is actively encouraging Australia, and other like-minded non-EU members, to go further and to seek Associate status.
Now, I’m not here to speak for the Australian Government, but it’s no secret that Australia continues to assess the mechanism by which its interactions with Europe will thrive.
And the Australian Government has shown it remains open to exploring all opportunities that broaden and deepen our collaboration with like-minded countries in areas of shared interest.
***
In discussing collaboration, we’ve talked about shared values, shared endeavours, shared approaches.
Now I want to touch on the shared infrastructure, and associated expertise, that underpins global collaborations and turbo-charges them!
Research infrastructure is so often the backbone of scientific progress in Australia and Europe.
Australian researchers have access to European infrastructure such as the Large Hadron Collider situated at CERN.
And Australia was the first associate member of the European Molecular Biology Lab.
Meanwhile, the Copernicus Arrangement provides access to earth observation data that enhances our drought monitoring, our agricultural research, ocean modelling and climate science.
We also access:
• the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor
• the European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser
• and the European Southern Observatory.
On the flipside of that coin … Australia is also home to some world-class infrastructure that’s used by European researchers:
• The Australian Synchrotron is a facility where many international teams use its beamlines for advanced experiments.
• The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre that supports global climate change modelling and genomics research, among other applications.
• And also our Marine National Facility, through its research vessel the RV Investigator, that supports international oceanographic research from Australia’s tropical north to the Antarctic ice-edge.
And in addition:
• the Australia Telescope National Facility
• the Australian Centre for Neutron Scattering
• our Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility
• and the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness.
But I’ve saved the best until last … the Square Kilometre Array, or S-K-A project!
It’s a shared undertaking – with facilities in Australia, South Africa and the UK – plus other collaborators from around the globe.
I remember this exciting project from when I joined CSIRO in 2002. It’s been a long time in its creation, with very diligent work by a lot of people. This project involves the creation of the world’s largest and most capable radio telescopes – a near impossible feat for any individual country. S-K-A is science with the lot … a worldwide collaboration that propels discovery across space and time!
These are all good facilities that can help Australian and European researchers.
***
Our current government has commissioned an examination of the nation’s research and development system.
In line with that, I support ongoing discussion about how networks of people – in Australia and overseas – as well as research infrastructure, can be properly funded and maintained.
That sustainable and skilled workforce is the backbone of our national research and our research infrastructure. And it helps to drive collaboration at a domestic and global level.
I also support infrastructure creation that supports networks of Indigenous Australians and elevates their knowledge systems.
***
There is a different way of doing infrastructure in some countries, and different priorities in other countries. But some things are universal.
Science is a team sport.
Collaboration leads to innovation.
Co-operation leads to solutions.
And a shared purpose leads to shared benefits – especially when it involves like-minded collaborators, as we are.
It is a reminder that when there’s a significant step forward in science, it’s often because of international collaboration.
And at that international level, we live in changing times.
But science has never existed in a vacuum. It has always operated in a world where uncertainty is the only certainty. Look at my collaborators in Lviv over the last 100 years.
So, this time of global flux may provide an opportunity – to examine what we want in our collaboration landscape and what we want it to look like now, and in five years, and in ten years.
As Chief Scientist, I hope to help to foster international collaboration in science and research. In doing so, I am guided by a quote from Louis Pasteur, one of those Europeans I read about as a child at Lane Cove Primary School.
Pasteur said: “Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.”
Thank you for being here today and for playing an important part in cross-border scientific endeavors and discussions. They can illuminate the world, shining a light on global problems ... and global solutions.
Thank you.