This time it's goodbye forever
By IAN ANDERSON
AFTER 108 years and 66 annual congresses, the Australian and New Zealand
Association for the Advancement of Science has decided to call it a day. At its
meeting last week, the ANZAAS council recommended dissolving the organisation
next March. The suggestion is likely to be accepted by the organisation's 500
members at a meeting in December.
Since the halcyon days of the 1960s when the number of delegates at the
annual meetings nudged 4000, attendance has declined steadily. This year in
Adelaide only 220 people registered for the three-day conference and 80 of
those were either speakers or from the media. Bruce McKellar, dean of science at
the University of Melbourne and chairman of ANZAAS, says that the organisation,
dependent on voluntary support, is facing bankruptcy. "We have nothing like the
financial support from government that the British Association enjoys," he
says.
McKellar says that the ANZAAS congress was finding it hard to attract
scientists, who prefer meetings in their own field attended by their peers. But
he hopes that a new type of forum might emerge to bring science to the public,
possibly tapping into the existing circuit of specialist meetings.
Magazine issue 2103 , published 11 October 1997
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