Secretary of the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts
Robyn Kruk AM
How can the department ensure that its research priorities match its policy needs?
CERF Conference, Canberra, 2009
About the video
An excerpt of the opening speech by the Secretary, Robyn Kruk AM, for the CERF Conference at the Shine Dome, Canberra, on 15 September 2009 (3mins 37secs).
Transcript of the video
Those of you that have taken the trouble of googling my background and probably seen my very poor City to Surf time, as I mentioned last night, would have seen there's been a commonality in my background, working in, well obviously both in environment and in health areas; quite simply good data has been my friend. Can I also, the other very key and consistent theme has been, that without alignment of policy priorities and the science or research priorities, we were not able to actually achieve the outcomes that we wanted to achieve; and this is largely what today is about - alignment. Thirdly, money was tight. So I think that's probably a good opening address for this conference because I think these are the issues we share jointly and these are the ambitions we also share, and clearly, as Greg's indicated one of the major issues in alignment is actually bringing the parties together, both to reflect on the policy agenda of the agency, to look at what the state of the knowledge is and look at what has been done to contribute, but also in terms of today's session to look at what needs to happen in going forward.
My first observation from my first six months in this department, and I think that ended last week, is that it's an ambitious and challenging goal. What we've clearly, the issues at the forefront of both the newspapers and the forefront of our thinking, but also at the forefront of community concerns. I mean as Australia transforms to a low pollution economy; while we're still feeling the effects of a global economic downturn, the department I think in the last couple of months has made some considerable efforts to try and refine its policy priorities and some of the outcomes that it seeks to achieve.
We obviously also have some remarkable opportunities and we enjoy a very unique and biodiverse environment that requires protection and innovative management to ensure a quality of life and economic prosperity for ourselves and for future generations. One of our major challenges is access to information; information to better understand the complexity of the systems we are managing, to make the case for investment in the natural environment to communities and to government, particularly in a tough fiscal climate, and also to ensure robust decision making, and to measure the impact of our actions so that we can continually improve our programs and initiatives. This is particularly relevant in the context of climate change and a tough fiscal climate. I will continually say that because I think that's one of the things we'll come back to. And one of the most powerful tools we can use to meet these challenges is research - sound environmental, sounds social and sound economic research. The CERF program, and it's been a real pleasure to work closely with a number of officials in this room over the years, has been a great beginning for applied environmental research that has produced world class knowledge to support public policy. Its strength in producing relevant and applicable research and decision making tools is a result of the program's focus on collaboration across disciplines, institutions, stakeholders and end users and most importantly on achieving public good outcomes. My department and I'd like to make this clear, remains committed to our leadership role in finding innovative solutions to policy questions. Leadership in this space is dependent on improving the alignment of policy and research; the theme of this year's conference.
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