Coalition says more than $20m has been wasted on research projects under the ARC
A three-year university project that seeks to disprove the ‘protectionist myth’ that Australia is ‘an island continent girt by sea’ has been awarded nearly half a million dollars as part of a grant program that no longer allows for government vetoes.
A three-year university research project that seeks to disprove the “protectionist myth” that Australia is “an island continent girt by sea” has been awarded nearly $500,000 in taxpayer funding as part of a grant program that no longer allows for government vetoes.
Other peer-reviewed projects that will next year share in the $93m fund delivered by the Australian Research Council include one from the University of Queensland that aims to “identify the causes of gender bias in the staged English-language translations of Ancient Greek tragedy and to redress this problem”, which was awarded more than $460,000.
Nearly $4m was awarded to a project run out of the University of Sydney that seeks to “advance the role of the arts as the ‘missing link’ in global movements of multispecies justice using innovative musical approaches to communicate the urgency of climate change and lead social change”.
The three projects are among $20m worth of grants distributed by the ARC that the Coalition is claiming was a waste of taxpayer funding.
Grants awarded funding under the ARC have come under scrutiny in the past, with former Coalition ministers having vetoed a number of humanities projects selected by the research council that they claimed were not an appropriate use of public funding.
However, under legislative changes passed by Labor in November last year, ministers are no longer able to directly approve or veto such grants.
Opposition government waste spokesman James Stevens said the recent examples of projects given funding “could not be further removed” from the challenges of everyday Australians who were struggling to pay their household bills after 13 consecutive interest rate rises.
“Committing almost half a million dollars to challenge the fact that Australia is an island continent is farcical,” he said.
“Australians know our country is an island. What they don’t know is why the Albanese government thinks we need to spend half a million dollars to challenge it.”
Other projects funded by the ARC include one from the University of NSW investigating how performance contributes to “cultural diplomacy” between Australia and Southeast Asia, which was awarded more than $1m; another project from the University of Sydney was given more than $430,000 to explore the relationship between policing and popular music in Australia.
Mr Stevens said while many projects funded through the ARC were absolutely necessary, there needed to be better vetting as to what kind of research was appropriate to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on.
“The same fund that is supporting important research into extreme weather events, space exploration and human brain function, has also allocated $3.7m to explore ‘innovative musical approaches’ to ‘multispecies justice’,” he said. “It is utterly absurd.”
Former education minister Simon Birmingham vetoed 11 grants worth $4.2m while in office between 2017 and 2018, including a La Trobe University project titled Writing the struggle for Sioux and US modernity, an Australian National University project called Price, metals and materials in the global exchange, and a Macquarie University project on “the music of nature and the nature of music”.
Senator Birmingham’s successor, Dan Tehan, vetoed five more grants in 2020 on national security grounds, while Stuart Robert vetoed six grants while acting in the role of education minister at the end of 2021, including Playing Conditions: How Climate Shaped the Elizabethan Theatre, Finding friendship in Early English literature, and Cultural Production of Religion by Science Fiction and Fantasy novels.
The ARC is currently headed up by former Western Sydney University chancellor and Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary Peter Shergold, with several other academics making up the council’s board.
Following a review into the ARC after Labor came to government, Education Minister Jason Clare announced the government would no longer have the power to veto grants unless on national security grounds.
Due to Labor amendments, an education minister who wishes to veto grants must now also provide an explanation to parliament.
The move followed then-ANU vice-chancellor and Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt warning that interventions would stop high talent international researchers from coming to study in Australia, claiming some had “expressed their concerns to the point of saying ‘I am not going to come to Australia until you sort this out’.”
“It literally affects my ability to attract talent to Australia,” he told a Senate committee following the vetoing of grants by Mr Robert.
Mr Clare stood by his changes to ARC funding and the inability for projects to be vetoed under the minister’s discretion, criticising the Coalition of having undermined the program while in government.
“Over the last 10 years, the ARC has been bedevilled by political interference,” he said.
“I have ended that by getting politicians out of the decision-making process.”
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