(letter originally posted here)

19 January 2022

To: The Hon Stuart Robert MP
Acting Minister for Education and Youth
[email protected]

CC: Professor Sue Thomas
CEO, Australian Research Council
[email protected]

As members of the Australian Research Council‘s (ARC) College of Experts, we write to express our concern over the Acting Minister for Education and Youth’s decision in late 2021 to reject six Discovery Project grants that were recommended for funding by the ARC.

As explained on its website, the ARC engages a College of Experts to play an essential role in identifying research excellence, in order to support the advancement of knowledge and contribute to national innovation. Its members are experts of international standing drawn from the Australian research community: from higher education, industry, and public sector research organisations. Many College of Experts members have extensive industry and community experience in addition to their specialist research expertise.

The quality of grant proposals submitted to the ARC is extremely high. The ARC runs a rigorous, multi-stage selection process. Each grant eventually recommended to the Minister for funding is first assessed by multiple international experts and multiple College members, and then individually discussed and voted on by College members at the Selection Advisory Committee panel meetings. The 19% of submitted proposals recommended for 2022 were therefore considered to be of the highest calibre measured against international standards for research across disciplines. Each was recommended on the strength not only of quality, innovation and feasibility, but also the wider benefit and value of the proposed research.

The Ministerial decision to override the ARC’s recommendations for funding undermines this process. The Minister’s stated reasons for rejecting the grants relate to their value for money and their benefit to Australia, but both criteria are explicitly addressed in all Discovery Project proposals and considered in detail by the expert assessors. Such interventions compromise the integrity of the research funding system, weaken public trust in the ARC, and threaten to damage Australia’s international reputation. At least two members of the College have already resigned in protest, and the incident has already attracted international concern (as reported in The Financial Review, 10 January 2022).

In Australia, the use of Ministerial discretion to reject the ARC’s recommendations is becoming commonplace. Ministerial discretion had been exercised in this way only once prior to 2018, but eleven grants were rejected by the relevant Minister in that year, and now six more in 2021.

We urge that the government adopt standards in line with the Haldane Principle, which holds that, while governments need to establish funding guidelines, decisions on individual research proposals are best made through independent peer review, and government ministers should not decide which individual projects should be funded. In the absence of such commitments in Australia, we cannot safeguard the independence and legitimacy of the Australian Research Council’s decisions.

We ask that this and future Australian Governments:

1. legislate amendments to the Australian Research Council Act 2001 that will ensure the independence of the ARC and prevent political interference in research grants; and
2. maintain the rigour and integrity of the ARC’s grant assessment process by (i) ending the Minister’s use of the National Interest Test to make unilateral decisions on individual projects outside of the peer review process, and; (ii) continuing to require senior research expertise of all members admitted to the ARC College of Experts.

We would welcome an opportunity for members of the College of Experts to meet with the Minister.

Yours sincerely,

Contacts

For further details or comments, please contact one of:

• Professor Andrea Witcomb, Deakin University
• Professor Jean Burgess, Queensland University of Technology
• Professor Andrew Francis, Western Sydney University
• Professor Aidan Sims, University of Wollongong