3 Roles and responsibilities for action

3.1 This chapter examines the roles of the key parties—the universities, national research agencies, their partnerships with the business sector, and the Government itself—in making best use of the public resources allocated to higher education research. Each of these parties has an important and distinctive role to play if the benefits of research are to be maximised in the national interest. Equally, the chances of success will be significantly boosted if collaboration occurs at all levels of a diverse and differentiated system.

3.2 The starting point is the need for a commitment to excellence. In an intensely competitive environment, research which is not of the highest quality is an opportunity lost. Arrangements for allocating public funds should promote excellence in all aspects of research: in the conduct of research and the quality of its output; in the environment and infrastructure for research; and in the delivery of research training to postgraduate students.

3.3 A key question is at what level, and by whom, judgements on excellence should be made. This in turn raises important issues of priorities within available resources.

The need for priorities

3.4 A country of Australia's size cannot realistically hope to be excellent in all fields of research; rather, it needs to focus its efforts in areas where we can genuinely excel, against international standards, or where there are special needs which will not be met by others. Too thin a distribution of our research resources will quickly work against excellence; there is considerable evidence of the need for a `critical intellectual mass' or `threshold effect', particularly in the natural sciences, below which quality is affected and research performance reduced.³³ In short, we need to focus resources and set priorities.

3.5 The importance of priority-setting is now widely recognised and accepted, both in Australia and internationally; the policy debate turns rather on issues such as who should set priorities; at what level; and in what balance—e.g. as between basic and applied research, short-term and long-term research, individual and team-based research, discipline-based and cross-disciplinary research, and among the arts and humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and technologies. These matters have recently been the subject of debate within Australia in the context of the Stocker Review of Science and Technology Arrangements, Priority Matters.³⁴

3.6 Accepting that priorities need to be set, and resources appropriately focussed, the Government believes that this will best be achieved by decision-making at a number of levels. Allocative systems based on highly centralised priority-setting processes have a poor track record, even in a relatively stable environment, and are clearly unsuited to the dynamism of modern research. Given the rapidity and unpredictability of knowledge development, no-one—least of all governments and central funding agencies—can completely foresee the directions from which the new developments of the future will arise. While it will be important from time to time to identify some strategic priorities for research at the national level, overly prescriptive central planning is only likely to stifle the prospects for significant advances.

3.7 Clearly the nation benefits if research conducted within universities is related to the opportunities and competitive advantages which Australian enterprises display or are developing. Sometimes these opportunities are immediate; at other times they are longer term, requiring patient pre-competitive inquiry. The mechanisms which can secure this market responsiveness in the higher education research effort are diverse. They range from user representation on national research granting bodies and institutional councils to joint university_industry appointments of key researchers and market rewards for researchers in terms of equity in spin-off developments and in direct funding of research. They impose objectives and present opportunities for both the business and research communities. Both need to be active participants in the dialogue about where Australia's research interests lie.

The strategic role of institutions

3.8 The great bulk of public funding for higher education research_well over $1 billion annually—is allocated to our universities in block grants for management and expenditure at their discretion. In one sense this is entirely appropriate, in so far as many decisions in research are best taken at the institutional level where they can be informed by the expert knowledge of the local research community. Equally, however, this substantial commitment in untied funding places a major responsibility on our universities to demonstrate that these resources are being spent to best advantage—not only through financial accountability but also, even more significantly, in terms of the quality of the development and production of knowledge through this investment.

3.9 The Government regards it as essential that each of our universities individually should form a judgement as to its particular strengths and capabilities in research, and how best it can contribute to the broader national research effort. The choices involved will often be difficult and complex, and may sometimes pose a significant management challenge within the universities. Ultimately, however, both the national interest and the standing of the universities themselves will be well served if strategic judgements are made as to how best to focus limited resources.

3.10 It is important, nevertheless, that the autonomy of universities to make their own decisions in these matters be maintained, and the Government's approach to this issue will be through incentives rather than directives. It will encourage universities, through funding mechanisms and by other means, to pursue a more integrated, systematic and strategic approach to the planning of their overall research efforts; to focus on what they do best, and concentrate their resources accordingly; to forge more effective links both within their own institutions and with other institutions and industry; to better relate their strategies for the conduct of research and for the delivery of research training; and to monitor rigorously the quality of their research activities and outputs.

3.11 These issues are treated in more detail in Chapter 5.

National competitive peer review

3.12 The Government, through such bodies as the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council, has a broad role in identifying and advising on research priorities at the national level. It has been quick to act as it identifies those national priorities, as has been the case with emerging industries such as biotechnology and information technology. However, the bulk of the curiosity-driven higher education research supported by Government through competitive funding is identified through the peer review process. While recognising the importance of national and institutional priorities, peer review encourages a diverse range of research activities across the nation and ensures a strong base of research into new fields of knowledge.

3.13 In recognition of this, virtually all of the major industrialised countries have put in place arrangements to support outstanding research through the direct funding of individuals, projects and programmes at the national level. While details of these arrangements differ somewhat from country to country, a common thread is the promotion of excellence through contestable processes based upon peer review. The Government accepts that, where decisions are taken at the national level, this is the best and surest way to guarantee the quality and international competitiveness of Australian research.

3.14 Australia already enjoys a strong system of contestable research along these lines, and the strengths of those existing arrangements need to be preserved. At the same time, there is significant scope to make current processes more efficient and effective, and to supplement them in ways which enhance the capacity of this system to respond to new developments and which promote a diversity of research activities, styles and modalities. Key priorities are a stronger emphasis on long-term, strategic research; greater incentives for cross-institutional, multi-disciplinary and collaborative research in all its forms; and a stronger voice for users in decisions on the allocation of limited funds. These matters are examined further in the next chapter.

3.15 A key strength of the competitive peer review system is the wealth and diversity of ideas and proposals generated by thousands of individual researchers across Australia. These investigator-led proposals, typically driven by a quest for deeper knowledge, provide a vital source of new ideas, fresh perspectives and creative approaches. It is essential to maintain this feature of the competitive grants process, and not in any way to limit or thwart it centrally. There must always be room for the individual researcher to bring forward ideas or proposals which may have escaped, or even be at odds with, the collective wisdom. While such considerations are especially important at the national level, they also apply at the level of individual institutions.

The role of Government

3.16 It is important to consider the role of the Government itself in support of higher education research. The rationale for that role is highlighted by several recent studies³⁵ which point to high rates of `public good' benefit from investment in research, beyond any direct commercial benefits which may accrue to immediate users. This, indeed, is the rationale for the Commonwealth Government's major investment in higher education research.

3.17 While the Government does not conduct research directly through the education portfolio, it reserves the right to mark out some broad strategic priorities for the national expenditure of public funds in order to ensure that national priorities are properly met. For this purpose it relies on Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council, the Australian Research Council and National Health and Medical Research Council and similar institutions to ensure that community needs are properly identified and brought to the Government's attention. Biotechnology, for example, is one area in which the Government would wish to see greater focus at present, reflecting its potential significance to Australia. However, beyond identifying such strategic priorities, the Government does not see it as its own role to direct in any detailed way the areas for research or the terms on which research should be conducted. As explained above, these roles are properly and best performed by others.

3.18 It is, moreover, the legitimate and necessary role of Government policy to ensure that there is an environment conducive both to excellence in research and to the application of research outcomes in the wider national interest. This goes partly to the Government's role as funder, in providing the resources needed for high-quality research which meets `national benefit' or `public interest' criteria. It goes also to the Government's role in promoting public awareness and understanding of the importance of research to Australia, and in informing public debate on scientific or research-related issues of community interest or concern. Not least, it goes to the structure of incentives within the public policy framework; to the design and structure of funding programmes; to the promotion of excellence, including through competition; and to the encouragement of a national culture of enterprise and innovation.

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