The government has introduced a $1.2bn research infrastructure bill that would rebuild laboratory estates at all twelve public universities over ten years, the largest science capital programme in Coravian history.
Nearly half the public university lab stock predates 1985, and a ministry survey last year rated a fifth of it “functionally obsolete”. The bill funds seven full rebuilds — beginning with the University of Meridale’s 1978 life-sciences tower — and rolling refurbishment elsewhere, plus a shared national facility for advanced materials.
Science Minister Petra Noll framed the bill as industrial policy as much as academic repair: “Vantor’s wafer line exists because its founders trained here. The next one should not have to leave to do their best work.”
Universities welcomed the capital but flagged the running costs. Vice-chancellors’ council chair Adela Vantris noted that a modern laboratory “costs three times its predecessor to power”, and pressed for the operating settlement — due in October alongside the tuition funding formula — to reflect it.
With the fee abolition act passed and this bill now tabled, higher education has become the government’s defining domestic file. First reading passed without division; the substantive fight, members on both sides agree, arrives with the budget.
