Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Initially this report, Building Australia’s research capacity, was about research training in Australian universities. However, it very quickly became apparent that this was far broader than just Australian universities. This is something that is very dear to my heart, as an exresearch scientist. I think that we desperately need to build up Australia’s research capacity. So the title Building Australia’s research capacity better encapsulates the scope of the committee’s inquiry.

As I said, in the hearings we very quickly learnt that just looking at universities was not going to be enough. As such, we ended up with a report that evaluated our research capability on a multiplicity of levels. Rather than going through the recommendations of the report, because the recommendations are in the report for all to see, I think it is more important to give a bit of a flavour as to what some of the background thinking was on some of these issues and what was highlighted in some of the hearings.

The first level, obviously, in getting someone interested in following a career in research is school. Hopefully, every one of us had a teacher that ignited some spark, some passion for something that caused us to pursue that avenue further on. Teachers are very important in the igniting of these sparks. We need to ensure that teachers are able to ignite sparks to get children enthusiastic about the whole idea of research. Someone once said to me that children are natural researchers and natural scientists. Think of a child in a highchair. They toss a spoon out of the highchair, it falls to the ground and mum picks it up and puts it back in the highchair. The child thinks, ‘Will it happen again if I do it again?’ This is in effect experimental method, testing the repeatability of certain things.

That is very important, as are role models in schools. We all know how important it is to have a certain number of male teachers in schools, particularly primary schools, so that you have good male role models, particularly for those boys who do not have a father in their household. Equally important are role models in terms of enthusiasm for science and other research. One thing that was highlighted—and some universities are picking up on it—is the adjustment of weighting for hard science and mathematics with university. The problem with year 12 is that all too often kids will choose not to do some of the hard sciences or the mathematics in favour of doing a course that they perceive they will get better marks for and therefore will afford them better opportunities at university. Some of the universities—and I think this should be spread wider—recognise this fact and as such place more weight on maths and science so that it somewhat balances out that equation.

We also had a look at the undergraduate component of research. One of the important things brought up was the issue of career path. Career paths for research students are not very often well established. They are doing their degree and they really do not see much in the way of a career path. This is something that has to be more clearly defined within the university system and some structures need to be put in place for that. Once again, there is the example of good role models. People who are actually out there doing the research and are enthusiastic about it will also engender some of this interest.

One of the things that was questioned in our hearings was the role of the honours year. Australia and the UK are the only two major countries that we were aware of that actually had an honours year. Other countries do not have that. So the question is: is the honours year something that is still relevant in contemporary society? That is something that will have to be examined further.

Then we got into the aspects relating to postgraduate study, and some of the recommendations focused on some of these. For example, at the moment, normal tenure for a scholarship is three years with a provision for possibly another six-month extension. The problem is that most PhD students take just over four years to complete their PhDs, so there is obviously a disconnect there. The point made as far as the stipend was concerned, even with a six-month extension, was that the funding gets cut off and the student then becomes part-time because they need to work part-time to get an income. This actually then serves to extend the PhD rather than reduce it. So the recommendation in terms of tenure and stipend was that we bring them together. Basically, as far as the stipend is concerned, the recommendation is 3½ years with the capacity for two six-month extensions, taking the potential stipend out to 4½ years—but hopefully they will only need four.

The number of scholarships was another issue that was dealt with. As far as Australian postgrad awards are concerned, the number of these scholarships is very low. To the government’s credit, they have actually increased the number of those scholarships. The other thing that is critical is the value of the stipend. At the moment the stipend, at around $20,000, is clearly way too low and the committee has recommended a significant increase to that stipend. In terms of post-PhD research there are problems as far as tenure-track positions are concerned. I was lucky enough to get a permanent research scientist position with CSIRO straight out of my PhD. That is something that is almost unheard of in the academic sector. There are numerous people who started at university when they left school and are in their mid to late 30s and have done innumerable post-docs but still have not got a tenure-track position. This is something that we really need to have a look at in attracting people into a research career.

Another thing that we examined was the salary and career structure. I have already given some idea of some of the problems with the career structure in attracting top students into research. It is far better just to do an undergraduate degree and go out and get a full-time job. You earn significantly more money than a stipend for a post-grad qualification and you have a permanent position as well.

We also covered the issue of ARC centres of excellence. These are something that I think are an excellent idea. I am actually on the advisory board of an ARC centre of excellence—the Centre of Excellence in Antimatter-Matter Studies. I know that there is outstandingly good work done within the centres of excellence. There are some problems, however, as far as ARC funding is concerned, and that extends to the centres of excellence. This is something that was not actually put to the committee but it is something that requires further investigation. You particularly want to attract top early-career scientists into these ARC centres of excellence to do excellent research, but then they do not actually build up a track record of gaining research grants because they are part of this large centre of excellence. As such, they can do some outstanding work within the centre of excellence but when they go out and try to go about getting an ARC grant they find it very difficult because they are in competition with people who have established track records as far as ARC grants are concerned.

We did highlight some very real problems with ARC funding. One of them is that the best way to go about getting an ARC grant is to have a track record of having had an ARC grant before and having completed the work that you said you would complete. Obviously, that then favours mid- or late-term career researchers. But the other problem—and it is an unintended consequence—is that in a way what you will get is inherently conservative research proposals because people will put in research proposals that they know they can complete so that they can continue with their good track record of actually delivering what they have said they will deliver. The problem of course is that this means you are not pushing boundaries to the extent that you might otherwise wish to. This is something that we really need to examine further as well.

Something else that needs to be improved is the funding, and this is something that we have made a recommendation on. At the moment, only one in five proposals gets funding. This is obviously a significant disincentive to people because you are getting some truly excellent research proposals that are going to the ARC and for one reason or another are not getting funded. So that funding needs to be increased. Another thing we need to look at is the issue of the full cost of research. It was pointed out to us that in many cases the ARC funds only four days out of five of a researcher’s career and theoretically the rest of that money needs to come from somewhere else. That is something else that we need to do something about.

In conclusion, I think that what we have here is a very important report indeed. I would like to thank the secretariat for the work that they have done. We certainly had some problems towards the middle where there was a great deal of debate because philosophical differences became quite apparent. But in the nature of things—and this is the way committees should work—we got there in the end and came to a compromise. Very often a different form of wording can solve something that could otherwise completely divide people. I think that this report is a good reflection on the entire committee, without the views of the committee having become divisive. As such, I think it is an extremely important document because it is something that we can justifiably say represents the viewpoint of both sides of politics in Australia.

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