Legislation introduced in November 2023 to reform the Australian Research Council (ARC) passed through parliament today. The reforms were in response to the recommendations of last year’s review into the ARC Act.
The ARC oversees the National Competitive Grants Program (NCGP), which funds the vast majority of Australian academic research. Before the review, ministers had a high level of discretion to approve or reject research grants.
According to Education Minister Jason Clare, “over the last decade, the ARC has been bedevilled by political interference and ministerial delays.” The intention of the government was to give the ARC more autonomy over the grants process.
Clare argued that the system their government inherited “has made it harder for universities to recruit and retain staff, and it has damaged our international reputation.”
“That’s not good for our universities. It’s not good for businesses either who work with our universities.”
The review was led by Professor Margaret Sheil AO, Professor Susan Dodds and Professor Mark Hutchinson, and received 220 submissions before producing their final report in August 2023.
The Albanese government agreed to implement nine of the recommendations, and agreed to the final one in principle. The Australian Research Council Amendment (Review Response) Bill implements six of the ten recommendations. The remaining four do not require legislation.
The changes include creating a clearer scope for the purpose of the ARC and specifying their functions, as well as establishing a designated committee within the ARC for engagement and consultation with Indigenous Australian academics and their research partners.
The most important change is the establishment of an independent ARC board which will be responsible for the approval of grants within the NCGP.
While largely taking the process out of ministerial hands, the government will still be able to approve grants for projects that drive “nationally significant investments,” a definition that includes infrastructure and training.
The government can also order the ARC to terminate funding for grants or direct the board to reject a grant if it poses national security concerns. They will have to inform the parliament when those powers are used.
The board is now also responsible for appointing the CEO and the members of the ARC’s College of Experts, who oversee external assessments.
The panel also recommended that existing metrics evaluating the impacts of research on the community such as “Excellence in Research for Australia” and “Engagement and Impact” be discontinued — and argued against them being replaced by a metrics based exercise which would track specific data points.
Clare, when initially responding to the report last year, asked the University Accord panel to weigh in on the recommendation.
In their final report, the panel pointed to the difficulty of designing an impact assessment system, arguing that “current evaluation methodologies also struggle to take account of developments in knowledge that are made by multiple individuals at different institutions.”
They also pointed to time-lag, and the struggle to establish causal links between research and the community in a complex policy setting as other factors which made evaluation difficult.
The report acknowledged that existing frameworks would have to be used in the short term while a new national research evaluation and impact framework is developed.
However, the review also highlighted that the framework had to be discipline specific. Automated data collection on studies, for example, may reduce an administrative burden, but would not function in fields like the “humanities, creative industries, social sciences” where more qualitative approaches, according to the report, are needed.
The Group of Eight, a lobbying group that represents the most prestigious universities in Australia including the University of Sydney, who as a group account for 70% NCGP funding, welcomed the bill’s passage.
Chief Executive Officer Vicki Thompson expressed particular support for the independent board.
“The importance of an independent Board cannot be overstated. Depoliticising ARC funding through an independent board strengthens the integrity of decision-making processes and minimises political interference, which has impacted the capacity of our universities to attract and retain world leading researchers.”