b'Canberra observed Canberra observedscientific and technical services ($5113 Mestimate for Australia is 1.8% of GDP or 29%), manufacturing ($4599 M orand going down.26%), financial and insurance services ($2847 M or 16%) and mining ($1050 MLocation of expenditureor 6%). These four industries accounted for 78% of total BERD (see Figure 2). New South Wales and Victoria continued Professional, scientific and technicalto have the highest levels of BERD, services recorded the largest increasewith $6820 M (39% of total BERD) and (up $1362 M or 36%) followed by$4550 M (26% of total BERD) respectively. manufacturing (up $691 M or 18%).Western Australia showed the largest Conversely, mining and financial anddecrease down $490 M (24%), followed insurance services recorded the largestby Queensland down $43 M (2%).decrease, down $826 M (44%) andBERD incurred overseas recorded the David Denham AM$368 M (11%) respectively. largest increase in dollar terms, up Associate Editor for Government $534 M (66%). Perhaps, this is why the denham1@iinet.net.au Comparisons with OECD countriesmining sector has declined so mucha are difficult because most producelot of research is undertaken overseas.these statistics annually, but at present Australian businessAustralia only produces them every two R &D investment ayears, because of funding cuts to the ABS. Impacts of efficiency dividendsnational disgrace The most recent OECD data I couldThe BERD situation will get worse find just contains the total R & Dbecause of the declining budgets and efforts. These include investmentsthe death by a thousand cuts to national BERD continues to decline asfrom both governments and industryscience institutions. CSIRO, Geoscience percentage of GDP (https://data.oecd.org/rd/gross- Australia and the ABS will all have to domestic-spending-on-r-d.htm) forshed staff because of the efficiency According to the Australian Bureau2017. The OECD average investmentdividend. These and other agencies not of Statistics (ABS), the businessis about 2.4% of GDP and as the bestonly undertake their own research but resources devoted to research and experimental development (BERD) during 201718 amounted to $17 438 MTable 1.Business resources devoted to R&D. (https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/8104.02017- 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2013/14 2015/16 2017/1818?OpenDocument). This was an increaseCurrent prices $M 17 291 16 760 18 007 18 321 18 849 16 659 17 438of 4.6% over the 201516 numbers,Human resources PYE 53 886 57 936 56 511 64 906 78 839 70 467 74 991but in terms of a percentage of GDP it represents a decline of 0.1% to be lessPYE = Person Years of Effortthan 1%. The chart in Figure 1 shows how BERD, as a percentage of GDP, has fared over the last 25 years. It is not a pretty sight.Table 1 shows the actual numbers, not corrected for inflation.The four industries with the greatest contribution to BERD are the professional, Figure 1.Business expenditure devoted to research and experimental development (BERD) in Australia from 19922018. After 2011 the ABS only producedFigure 2.Australian BERD, by top ten industries. Notice that in percentage terms the mining sector annual numbers for alternate years. The data for thedeclined the most. Source: ABS https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/8104.02017-missing years have been estimated by interpolation. 18?OpenDocument33 PREVIEW DECEMBER 2019'