On 5 December 2002 the Australian Prime Minister announced four national research priorities [1]and associated goals. ACIAR's funding priorities will be informed by these priorities as well as the goals of Australia's development cooperation program and the research and development priorities of partner countries.

The priorities are:

• an environmentally sustainable Australia
• promoting and maintaining good health
• frontier technologies for building and transforming Australia
• safeguarding Australia.

The priorities outline a vision for research based on key challenges facing Australia now and in the future.

Within each of these four themes, the Government identified a number of priority goals. Commonwealth research bodies, including ACIAR, are required to report annually on progress in the implementation of the priorities. ACIAR's implementation is strongly focussed on both an environmentally sustainable Australia and safe guarding Australia.

View the National Research priorities [2]