Key points
- A government-ordered review of the Australian Research Council concluded the education minister should be stripped of their veto powers over scientific grants
- The review comes after a string of ministers personally intervened to block peer-reviewed science grants
- The review also makes a number of findings to streamline the ARC’s processes, which take up huge amounts of scientists’ time
Politicians meddling with peer-reviewed science grants is a “widespread source of despair” and should be stamped out, a government review of Australia’s top science-funding agency has found.
The review recommends the education minister be stripped of the power to block grants except for national security reasons, after a string of ministers personally intervened to veto grants.
“The practice of overriding expert advice is anathema to world’s best practice,” the review, released by the government on Thursday, concluded.
Leading science organisations welcomed the report’s findings, while the government said it would consider the recommendations.
“The proposed changes would create stronger guardrails to prevent future political interference in the awarding of grants,” said Science and Technology Australia CEO Misha Schubert.
Four ministers, all from Coalition governments, have used their power to block Australian Research Council grants since 2001.
Former education minister Simon Birmingham secretly blocked 11 taxpayer-funded grants for arts and humanities projects in 2018, a move that led to national and international outcry.
Announcing the review in August, federal Education Minister Jason Clare noted that “political interference” had damaged Australia’s international research reputation.
Former acting education minister Stuart Robert blocked another six in 2021, including a research project on student climate action.
The government-ordered review found the interventions eroded trust between scientists and the research council.
It recommends grants be recommended by the council’s chief executive and approved by a new board, and not the minister.
The recommendation “had to be made”, said Professor Ian Chubb, the Australian Academy of Science’s secretary for science policy. “Removing the veto was essential to build trust back into the system.”
The academy called on the government to implement the review’s findings as soon as possible.
The review also recommends the Australian Research Council be given a legislated role in policing research misconduct.
Unlike other countries, Australia has no research watchdog, meaning universities are left to investigate and discipline their own staff.
Professor David Vaux, a leading research integrity campaigner, said the recommendation was “good as far as it goes”, but would not cover research outside the council’s scope. A proper research integrity watchdog was still needed, he said.
Australia’s research budget has increasingly been tilted away from basic research and towards commercialisation – something lamented by many basic researchers, such as physicists and astronomers.
The review recommends tilting the balance back, in part by legislating a commitment to funding basic research. But the review did not consider overall science funding, which has been falling as a percentage of GDP.
Kylie Walker, CEO of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, called on the government “to conduct a broader review of national research funding with an aim to bring total R&D funding to levels comparable with our international competitors, around 3 per cent of GDP”.
Academics have for years lamented the Kafkaesque nature of applying for a grant from the Australian Research Council, which can take hundreds of hours and has little chance of success; universities report spending tens of millions of dollars on council-ordered research evaluations.
The report makes several recommendations to streamline this process, including reducing the grant-application process down to just a handful of pages that could be quickly reviewed.
The Twitter account ARC_Tracker, which has been a major critic of the council, said: “Having thousands of researchers spend hundreds of hours preparing proposals when 80 per cent of them won’t be funded has been a colossal waste.”