Guy Healy and Luke Slattery| October 08, 2008
FEDERAL Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Minister Kim Carr has declared the Cutler innovation review has given him the tools for a shake-up of university research and a compelling argument for extra funding.
In an interview with the HES, Senator Carr linked the imperative of lifting the country`s stalled innovation performance to the maintenance of living standards."The fact of the matter is that by international standards (of innovation) we have been slipping," he said. "If we don`t improve we won`t be able to maintain living standards."
Asked if Cutler`s numbers provided the evidence for him to go to ask cabinet for the extra funding he was lobbying for, Senator Carr said: "It does provide a solid argument for why there needs to be a higher level of performance for this country to be able to meet our objectives in regard to productivity and competitiveness and in regard to the maintenance of living standards."
But he downplayed prospects of any big funding boost in next year`s budget.
"We are not talking about one budget and we are not talking about one parliament," Senator Carr said. "We are talking about a 10-year program."
The Cutler report has handed the Government the tools to fundamentally redistribute university research funding. Cutler recommends the distribution of more than $600 million in research block and research training funding on real research performance as measured by the Government`s Excellence in Research for Australia audit.
Asked how he would redistribute the research funding, Senator Carr said it was a "a question we will need to look at. That`s part of the mission-based approach we`ll adopt through the compacts." Compacts were the policy instrument the Government would use "to encourage universities to take a sharper focus on what they are doing themselves and how they fit within a national framework".
Universities would be asked to identify the areas of strength they would concentrate on, and how they could contribute to the country`s overall welfare, he said.
"Where a university has a particular strength, we want to encourage it; where it may need to collaborate with other institutions we want to encourage that," Senator Carr said.
In a related development, the Group of Eight will today urge the Government to modify its thinking about compacts as outlined in the Macklin white paper of 2006, and ask universities to better understand their costs and benefits.
In a discussion paper designed to stimulate debate across the sector in the hiatus between the Cutler and Bradley reviews, the Go8 says Labor`s white paper articulated "important and necessary but not sufficient principles" for the design of mission-based compacts.
The paper says Australian experiences with community sector compacts, together with recent experiences in Britain and the US, inform a new approach.
"These findings suggest that compacts should be developed consultatively, that work should be put in ahead of implementation to prepare the ground for their application, that purposes should be clear, that performance measures should be linked to goals from the outset, and that commitments should be adequately resourced."
Fears have been raised in the Go8 about the central planning psychology inherent in the compacts approach, and the University of Melbourne has said it would prefer a deregulated student demand-driven model.
Nevertheless, the Go8 paper recommends negotiated compacts as the basis for a constructive re-engagement between government and higher education. The compacts have the potential to "rebuild relations of trust and mutual accountability" between universities and government, it says.
"Compacts might function as a bridge to a more flexible and outcomes-oriented funding policy approach, enabling universities to adjust to new incentives and expectations.
"An ongoing role for compacts can be expected to be tailored to the different circumstances of each university."
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