This is a ridiculous thing to say. Curtin, Hawke, and Gillard all left the faiths they were raised in, and the first two Prime Ministers were Spiritualist (no dogma, not really zealots) and Unitarian (no supernatural belief) respectively. Australia is not a country in which accusations of zealotry can be fairly levelled.
If you'll allow me to ignore the non-sequiter about Abbott, it's worth pointing out that while he did cut CSIRO funding, as much to my disappointment as it was to yours, it wasn't really unprecedented, with funding experiencing lows that were similar under Hawke and Howard.[0]
We ought to fund public research better in this country. We can afford it. But we don't have to use silly name-calling to get there.
