president's address. 15 



more urgent is the case of the land and its products, for it is on 

 these that Australia must ultimately depend. Hence urgent 

 need for knowledge of the multifarious and peculiar climatic 

 conditions, of the natural economy of our soils, of our waters, of 

 our forests, of our birds and of our insects. Do the members of 

 the Legislatures possess this knowledge, or are they able to obtain 

 the knowledge from a sufficient number of experts within or 

 without the Public Service, and are they willing to weigh with 

 care the dispassionate advice of the experts % Our members are 

 chosen because of their knowledge of men, not forgetting their 

 weaknesses, their knowledge of law and of the workings of the 

 political machine, and their knowledge of business, but not 

 because of their knowledge of Nature. The few medical men 

 elected are almost the only members with a scientific training. 

 I think, in our own State at all events, there is a growing 

 willingness to acquire exact information by the appointment of 

 Commissioners including scientific experts, but how often in the 

 past the reports of skilled officers and the findings of Commis- 

 sions have been neglected or ignored ! On the Executive side 

 what an army of clerks there is in comparison with the few 

 scientific experts, and how often these are looked upon askance 

 and with suspicion as idealists and faddists, who bring forward 

 awkward objections to cut and dried schemes which the will of 

 the Minister or the exigencies of party have decided must go 

 through. 



The public is generally not sufficiently educated to realise the 

 importance of scientific knowledge in the Government. Yet it 

 is the public which pays for the mistakes of the Government. 

 And it is the public upon whose behalf the expert speaks. It 

 was the science of the skilled expert which stayed the plague and 

 checked diphtheria. It is the science of the skilled expert which 

 has reduced, and only can reduce, the scourge of typhoid. It is 

 only by the science of the expert that we can hope to be able to 

 exterminate those curses of our civilisation, phthisis and cancer 

 and syphilis, and, I think I may add, that greater curse still, the 

 craving for strong drink. It is only science that can teach us how 



