Academics and scientists need more!

Date: 04 May 2004

Federal Budget research package must produce for the public interest, say unions.

Unions representing research staff in the CSIRO and public universities believe the Government's upcoming science and innovation package must produce results on number of key threshold issues, including injecting sufficient funding to arrest Australia's decline in R&D spending relative to our OECD competitors.

"The National Tertiary Education Union's research shows that the Government must deliver at least a $6.8 billion increase over its 2003-2004 levels of expenditure to the end of the decade simply to maintain the status quo," said NTEU President, Dr Carolyn Allport.

"The research community is looking to the Government not just to maintain current spending but for increased investment targeting infrastructure development, university block grants, adequate support for CSIRO and other publicly funded research agencies, and initiatives aimed at research students and encouraging business R&D."

"Reports that the Budget will contain $180 million in funding for CSIRO Flagship programs are positive," said Dr Michael Borgas, President, CSIRO Staff Association. "But the Flagships are less than nine per cent of CSIRO's total spending in the current financial year. The whole of CSIRO is in desperate need of increased funding, not just the Flagship program. CSIRO is losing science capability right now."

In addition to the overall level of funding, the research community believes the Government's research package must meet five important threshold issues:

1. Encouraging a diverse research sector: Publicly funded research agencies, like the CSIRO, perform different roles from universities and both must be supported properly to do their job. The package must recognise the cooperation that already exists between these groups build on their individual strengths, rather than force a one size fits all approach.
    
2. Fully funding the cost of research: According to the Government's own research reviews, universities leveraged a total of $450 million from their own budgets to participate in competitive research programs in 2002-3. This hidden cost serious impedes the capacity to invest in infrastructure and strategic initiatives. Publicly funded research agencies such as CSIRO face a similar problem.
    
3. No increased bureaucracy: Reports the Government is planning to introduce a Strategic Research Council are of concern. Universities and CSIRO are already directly accountable to Government and resources need to be targeted at the researchers themselves not bureaucracy.
    
4. No competition for competition's sake: We challenge the notion that more competition for funding will result in greater research excellence. There is no evidence that reducing universities' or CSIRO's block funding in favour of a more competitive regime will do anything more than impose an added burden on researchers.
    
5. Safeguarding the public interest: While the package must improve business's ability to access the commercial benefits of R&D, universities and publicly funded research agencies should be left to get on with the job of producing research that benefits the whole community.

For further information

Contact:	Dr Michael Borgas
Union:	CSIRO Staff Association
Phone:	0400 306 166

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