La Trobe backtracks on claim ‘ARC hid secret veto’
La Trobe University has backed away from its explosive claim that the Australian Research Council provided false information.
La Trobe University has backed away from its explosive claim that federal government funding agency the Australian Research Council gave the university false information to hide the fact former education minister Simon Birmingham had secretly vetoed research grants.
Twelve days ago — in the wake of the discovery that Senator Birmingham had quashed a $926,372 Future Fellowship the ARC had recommended for one of its researchers — La Trobe vice-chancellor John Dewar turned the attack on the ARC.
In a message to university staff he said it was concerning that the ARC had concealed the ministerial veto and accused the council of giving “untrue” feedback to La Trobe’s researcher that “profoundly misled the university and the researcher involved”.
“This is a deeply unsatisfactory state of affairs that has the potential to undermine the ARC’s system of peer review,” Professor Dewar said.
After talks last week with the ARC, La Trobe now declines to repeat the accusation.
However, The Australian understands the university has accepted an explanation by the ARC that shows there was no intention by the council to mislead and that the university had misunderstood council processes.
But neither the university nor the ARC will clarify, on the record, the substance of their subsequent discussions. And neither has La Trobe University withdrawn the accusation. which leaves the damaging allegations hanging in the air.
Professor Dewar is on holiday this week and acting vice-chancellor Kerri-Lee Krause instead shifted the attack to Senator Birmingham.
“The actions of the former minister placed the ARC in an invidious position,” Professor Krause said. “We remain deeply concerned that the former minister rejected a grant recommendation by the ARC following a rigorous and highly competitive process.”
For its part the ARC only will say: “The ARC contacted La Trobe University … and confirmed that the feedback provided to La Trobe University was not an error.”
It is believed that La Trobe’s misunderstanding arose because its unnamed researcher — whose project was titled Writing the Struggle for Sioux Modernity — had been told earlier this year by the ARC that the application, when ordered by merit, was between the 10th and 25th percentile of all rejected grants.
Normally this would mean it had no chance of being successful and the researcher assumed it was rejected on merit grounds.
However, unbeknown to the researcher and the university, it was later reassessed and recommended to Senator Birmingham, only to be secretly vetoed.
When the university learned, thanks to revelations in a Senate estimates hearing last month, that the application had been vetoed by the minister, it assumed the poor feedback about the grant from the ARC had been retrospectively altered to give the minister cover.
But, apparently, the researcher had received information only about the application’s initial assessment, not the revised assessment that rated it much higher.
Universities remain furious at Education Minister Dan Tehan’s decision to respond to the grant veto furore by introducing a new “national interest” test even though some grant applications are already judged against national interest and others are judged against tests of economic, commercial, environmental, social and cultural benefits.
In an article in today’s Australian, Mr Tehan says the new national interest test is “specific”, not just part of the broader benefit criteria as before. “A national interest test will strengthen the broader ‘benefit’ criteria. Nothing more, nothing less,” he writes.
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