Transformation is going nowhere until this $16bn mess of research grants is fixed
Instead, there are numerous ministers signing off on dozens of decisions, serving all sorts of agendas that fund the same sort of stuff.
It’s a mess. “We have a 150 separate programs, we need a joined-up national strategy,” says Luke Sheehy from peak national lobby Universities Australia.
He should be on to something now that big government is the go.
The National Reconstruction Fund has $15bn to “diversify and transform” the economy and research funding is now effectively a part of industry policy. The Australian Research Council is redesigning its grants to focus on work with commercial potential.
And funding basic science, research for the love of learning with no market in mind, is in a long-term slump. At about 30 per cent of university outlays it is nearly half what it was around the turn of the century.
But of instead of a national research plan, the government is just splashing cash all over the place.
Education Minister Jason Clare sets overall policy for university research that is not about medicine but it is the all but independent ARC that gives out the grants, except those department officials authorise. The ARC is in the process of simplifying its programs to focus more funding on research that could create products – which is what the department does.
Just like the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, which manages the Co-operative Research Centres, time-limited, outcome-specific collaborations of universities and industry that take research from lab to market.
Industry and Innovation Minister Tim Ayres also gets to set the government’s national research priorities, but whatever does not work is not his problem, he only signs off on 10 per cent of grants.
It is Health Minister Mark Butler who oversees the funding agencies with the serious money. The National Health and Medical Research Council has a $1.3bn budget this financial year. Plus the $24bn Medical Research Future Fund will allocate $650m to take projects with commercial promise.
Plus other portfolios have honey pots, notably Defence, Energy and Agriculture. And then there is the 5000-staff, $2.2bn CSIRO, “delivering large-scale, multidisciplinary science and technology solutions”. It is in Ayre’s portfolio but sometimes appears happiest in its own company.
And so we are stuck with “a patchwork system” that Sheehy says “creates gaps, overlaps and perverse incentives. It discourages collaboration and makes it harder to turn ideas into real-world solutions.” He is not alone. As a report on submissions to the present national review of research and development for Ayres’ puts it, “the lack of co-ordinated national planning has also resulted in fragmented investments and under-utilised capabilities”.
The way to fix this, Universities Australia suggests, is a ministerial research council that co-ordinates policy and funding across portfolios and presents all-of-science recommendations to cabinet.
As an alliance of equals acting for the greater good it isn’t going to happen – turf-defending officials and science lobbies with patches to protect will see to that.
One way to deal with them would be a solely science and technology minister in cabinet, like nations that bet their prosperity on research. South Korea does. So do the Israelis.
As well as the Brits – Peter Kyle also has four junior ministers, handling research, AI and innovation. Australia used to have a science minister until Tony Abbott decided not to, but university outrage wore him down and he added it to the industry portfolio. Where it now sits with Ayres – who has a bunch of other stuff to worry about, like wondering what struggling smelters the National Reconstruction Fund will consider bailing out.
But even if there was a dedicated seat at the cabinet table the minister would need advice, independent of line departments with funding to protect, from an independent agency staffed by experts, that recommends research system design. Overall budget control would be too much of an ask; the ruthless medical research establishment, which always wants more, would see to that, but a policy unit with a whole-of-government remit could create a national strategy. The R&D community gets this; submissions to the review for Ayres’ department call a for an “entity” to manage government spending for impact.
Universities Australia suggests housing a science policy council in the soon-to-be legislated Australian Tertiary Education Commission, which will implement higher education policy, thus protecting ministers from permanently aggrieved vice-chancellors and union leaders. It is too cute by half – a great way to ensure research funding policy would be made where the interests of universities are understood and away from business advocates of tax concessions for industry R&D. But a separate agency such as ATEC could be the go, with the intellectual oomph and independence to create national policy independent of public service deal-doing and research lobby special pleading.
It would not be an easy outfit to run, needing a serious scientist with business experience plus political nous and a great gift for making a case. But there are people who could do it. Alan Finkel, Australian chief scientist from 2016 to 2020, had the skills mix.
Of course, there is another way; the government cuts duplicated programs and moves the money to competitive bids open to industry in collaboration and competition with universities. But it is not going to happen, not while national research and development policy assumes that business is the government’s business, which is where we are now.
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The Albanese government spends a bucket of money on research – $16bn plus change last financial year – which makes the minister in charge really important in deciding what gets researched to grow the economy, protect the environment or help us live longer. Or they would if there were just one.