POLICY & REFORM campusreview. com. au
Road to research reform
Photo: Regis Freyd / Unsplash
The government has released its vision for the future of Australian research. We ask UA’ s Belinda Robinson what it means for universities.
Belinda Robinson interviewed by Loren Smith
The Australian Animal Health Laboratory, which hosts research into exotic livestock diseases, is just one facility flagged for upgrade under the government’ s new National Research Infrastructure
Roadmap.
In it, chief scientist Dr Alan Finkel, the Roadmap’ s chairman, identified nine research areas that need attention if Australia is to maintain its scientific standing: digital data and e-research platforms; platforms for humanities, arts and social science; characterisation; advanced fabrication and manufacturing; advanced physics and astronomy; earth and environmental systems; biosecurity; complex biology; and therapeutic development.
The Roadmap, which was drafted following input from over 580 stakeholders, also encompasses nine recommendations for fulfilling the designated research, including investment, workforce upskilling and international engagement.
Major Australian research institutions, which employ 35,000 researchers, have welcomed the chief scientist’ s ambitions, though they’ re concerned about funding.
Professor Les Field, secretary for science policy at the Australian Academy of Science, explained this in a statement:“ The academy now looks forward to the release of the government’ s research infrastructure investment plan.
“ Infrastructure funding in this plan must be long term, strategic and insulated from annual budgetary fluctuations, consistent with the long-term nature … of research infrastructure investment.”
Belinda Robinson, chief executive of Universities Australia, reacted similarly to Field. Although she is enthusiastic about the prospect of further research into areas like advanced manufacturing, biosecurity and medical therapies, the question of inadequate investment lingers in her mind. She sits down with Campus Review to discuss her concerns.
CR: You’ re concerned about the proposed closure of the education investment fund and how the Roadmap will be funded. Can you talk about the key impacts as you see them potentially playing out?
BR: We are very concerned about the reallocation or the repurposing of the $ 3.7 billion dollars that currently sits with the education infrastructure fund. This is a fund used to invest in university capital works, and in fact it’ s the last capital works fund left in the country for that purpose. So once that $ 3.7 billion dollars is repurposed, there will be no funding available at the Commonwealth level for government to invest in university infrastructure, whether it’ s lecture theatres or labs, upgrading old facilities or building new ones. And of course, technology has changed everything when it comes to universities in terms of how they deliver their programs, and the opportunities it offers in conducting research.
Those changes mean that the infrastructure that universities have needs to change and evolve as well. So we’ re very concerned about the last remaining fund to invest in infrastructure being abolished. The problems with the EIF, the Education Investment Fund, are more broad. It’ s not just in relation to the Roadmap. On the National Research Infrastructure Roadmap, this is a project that was requested by the government and was conducted by the Roadmap task force chaired by the chief scientist Alan Finkel. And I’ ve got to say that the project itself, the Roadmap itself, is really terrific. It’ s a really good piece of work. It has clearly identified nine priority areas in which Australia can or should or does excel.
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