Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Mike Symon (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to acknowledge the member for Tangney and his remarks on the report Building Australia’s research capacity. It was certainly a great experience to go through and, at the end of it, we have come out with what I think is a really good document. As a member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Innovation I would like to take this opportunity to commend the report and the work that has been done by all involved, especially the chair of the committee, the member for Calwell, and her great work in leading this inquiry and making sure we did not go too far off track. But I also appreciate the large amounts of work done by other members of the committee from both sides of the House. And of course I have to thank the committee secretariat—it is nice to see them here today for this—particularly Russell Chafer, Anthony Overs and Natalya Wells for their work on the ground and the behind-the-scenes jobs that they did that made our task a pleasure to attend to.

In the course of the inquiry we heard from 64 witnesses, we went to 14 public hearings across Australia and 106 submissions came in from interested parties. A lot of those were quite large and they took a lot of reading, but they were all worth while. We also received six supplementary submissions and 13 exhibits to the inquiry. At the end of all of that, we have come out with the report, which contains a list of 38 recommendations. I will not go over each and every one of those, although I might like to, but in the time I have I will settle on a few and I will leave some of the subjects to others who are also going to speak on this report.

To me, the main recommendation in the report that should really be noted was recommendation 2, which stated:

The Committee recommends that the Australian Government increase funding for research and development by raising incrementally the Gross Expenditure on Research and Development as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product over a ten year period until it equals the [OECD] average.

I believe that this recommendation should be considered the most serious recommendation in light of the evidence produced to the inquiry. We heard from Universities Australia, in their submission to the inquiry, that gross expenditure on research and development as a percentage of GDP in Australia stands at 1.76 per cent, well below the OECD average of 2.26 per cent. In percentage terms that probably does not sound like a great difference but, when you look at it in dollar terms, they estimate it is around $5 billion a year. And that is not just $5 billion this year or $5 billion next year; it is $5 billion every year—past, present and, if we do not change it, future. If we allow that gap to remain, Australia will be hoping that someone else in the rest of the world does our job in research and development for us. This submission went on to note that government contribution to research funding has diminished from 76½ per cent in 1978-79 to just 41.4 per cent in 2004-05. The University of South Australia suggested that Australia should set a target of three per cent of GDP for investment in R&D, following the European Union’s Lisbon summit target agreed to by the EU in March 2000.

We also heard from witnesses in public hearings and through many submissions of the need for an increase in funding of the Research Training Scheme to cover the full cost of each higher degree by research program at Australian universities. This is picked up in recommendation 4 of the report. The Group of Eight submission on this topic explained that government funding rates for HDR student training bear no relation to actual costs of providing services. They went through an extensive list of things that are provided to students in the program that are not funded under the RTS. They were not the only ones. There was a stack of submissions from various universities and institutions on this, including: Southern Cross University, the Australian Council of Deans of Science, James Cook University, the Australian National University, the University of New South Wales, the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies, Murdoch University, the National Tertiary Education Union, the University of Melbourne, Research Australia, Deakin University, the University of the Sunshine Coast, the University of Queensland and the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations. I apologise if I have missed any off that list, but it was a very popular subject. Recommendation 6 deals with the way the RTS payments are made and the problems caused by holding half of these funds until student completion.

Probably more than any other topic in the inquiry, we heard evidence from many groups and individuals about the inadequacies of the current Australian postgraduate award, or APA, stipends. We heard from the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations that the APA has not kept pace with living costs and is now projected to fall below the poverty line for single individuals by the end of this year. It already fell well below the poverty line for those students with families many years ago. Queensland University of Technology told us the value of the APA is uncompetitive in the marketplace for talent. Quite simply, they put it to us that, if someone is bright and has a good future, they will probably go where the dollars are, and the universities just do not have those dollars in this scheme to get this sort of talent in their door. Literally dozens of other submissions also called for an increase in the APA. If my memory serves me correctly, I did not hear of or see one submission that said the current level of the APA was adequate—not one.

The committee also heard a great deal of evidence that the duration of the APA was too short in many cases. When I looked at it through the committee hearings, seeing that RTS funding applied for four years but the maximum duration of the APA was three years with a six-month extension really showed that there was an omission. When undertaking research, there is a four-year funding block grant through the RTS to the institution but not to the student. The problems that came about when the funding for the student ran out while they were still at the university were explained to us by quite a few witnesses who came in and spoke about being on a stipend one week and, the next week, having to go out and find part-time work whilst trying to complete their studies—the sharp end of their studies, I might add. These concerns that were raised are reflected in recommendation 15—that the Australian postgraduate award stipend values be increased by 50 per cent—and recommendation 16, where the committee recommends that the APA stipend be fully indexed to CPI, which is something that has not happened in recent times. Of course, that means it is worth less in real terms every year.

Whilst on the subject of APAs, I should also note the committee received many submissions regarding the taxation of part-time APAs. It strikes me as quite strange that it appears the government is giving with one hand but then taking away with the other. A lot of students do not have a choice when it comes to full-time study. They might have family responsibilities. They might have other things happening in their lives that do not allow them to go and study full time but that do not stop them from trying to pursue study part time. But, if they are taxed differently to someone who is studying the same subject full time, there is certainly an inequity there and I think it is a disincentive if we are trying to increase the number of people that we get into research training. So the report deals with that issue at recommendation 20.

The committee also received many submissions regarding the lack of value placed on research as a career in Australia. The report notes:

The three major impediments to attracting researchers to academic careers are the scarcity of opportunities, lack of job security, and uncompetitive salaries.

There seems to be a gap when it comes to early-career researchers, and recommendation 34 of the report addresses this issue.

There are many other areas of this report I would like to comment on, but my time for this is limited. I would certainly recommend that anyone with an interest in higher education or research and development read this report. This is an area of education that has been neglected for far too long, and I am very pleased to have played a part in the development of this excellent report. I commend this committee report, Building Australia’s research capacity, to the House.

Darren Cheeseman (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to be able to address this chamber on the very exciting work that the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Innovation has undertaken. I too would like to acknowledge the hard work and assistance of the committee secretariat. There is no doubt that we would not be able to inquire so extensively into some of these issues without their patience and assistance throughout the process, and it is very much appreciated by all members of the committee.

Today I wish to address three recommendations within the report on Building Australia’s research capacity that in my view deserve some commentary. I might start with recommendation 2, which reads:

The Committee recommends that the Australian Government increase funding for research and development by raising incrementally the Gross Expenditure on Research and Development as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product over a ten year period until it equals the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development average.

There is absolutely no doubt that at the moment we are lagging behind our competitor nations. Scientific research has become increasingly important for our society as we move forward. By lifting expenditure in this area, I think Australia will be much better placed to respond to the very significant and great challenges that face our economy at the moment, whether they be the challenges and the threats that come from the current financial crisis, from climate change or from the lack of innovation in many parts of the economy. If we do not lift expenditure in this sector we will not have the capacity to adequately respond in these areas. I certainly anticipate and look forward to the government’s response to that recommendation. I think it is critical for Australia.

The second recommendation that I wish to look at is recommendation 4, which reads:

The Committee recommends that the Australian Government fund the full cost of each higher degree by research program at Australian universities through the Research Training Scheme and within all national competitive grant funding programs. This funding should take into account:

• the removal of the high-cost/low-cost funding differential that currently exists between research disciplines, subject to interim arrangements to ensure that no discipline is disadvantaged;

               …            …            …

• the provision and maintenance of a minimum standard of supervision and resources.

This last point is the aspect of the recommendation that I wish to address. All too often, one of the significant challenges that PhD students face in their attempt to obtain their doctorates is the quality of supervision provided and the opportunities that extend from having appropriate supervision. Without appropriate supervision, and the resources in place to provide that appropriate supervision, it is very difficult for students to work through some of the challenges that may extend from their research as speedily as they might be able to otherwise. Providing those resources is a challenge that all universities face. Again, I look forward to the recommendation for that area being adopted by the Commonwealth.

The last recommendation I wish to shine the spotlight on is recommendation 8, which reads as follows:

The Committee recommends that the Australian Government develop and implement additional industry partnership programs, possibly modelled on Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, that will further facilitate connection between business and research institutions.

Time and time again we hear reports on the news that Australian researchers have had a breakthrough on matters that are very important to us in Australia, yet they find it extremely difficult to actually develop those partnerships with industry to get their knowledge or breakthrough realised in the Australian economy. Often, as a consequence of that, we lose our researchers overseas, so we lose their ideas and we lose their breakthroughs.

I think it is critically important that we develop better models and programs to assist with commercialisation of research. When I look in my own backyard, I have Deakin University’s Waurn Ponds campus within my electorate. They have, in a very innovative way, established a high-technology precinct that I believe, in due course, will enable commercialisation of technologies developed at that university.

There is also tremendous opportunity within the Geelong economy for Deakin University to work with the private sector to develop new products and innovations that can create a very substantial number of jobs within my region. The Geelong economy is of course an old economy. It is based on manufacturing, and we all know the challenges that Australian manufacturers face. I think Deakin University along with other regional universities and towns throughout Australia can play a significant role in assisting those economies and communities to meet the challenges they face. I again look forward to the government’s response on recommendation 8.

The report is very detailed and it canvasses a substantial number of issues. It is probably fair to say that the members of the committee probably did not quite realise the breadth of the work that we were taking on when we initially agreed to the terms of reference. But it certainly has been a very worthwhile process and it was pleasing for all members of the committee that, despite our differences throughout the process, we were able to come up with a set of recommendations in a bipartisan way and a way in which we believe will lead us towards identifying and resolving some of the challenges that universities, their students and our communities face. I again acknowledge the secretariat of the committee, and of course my fellow committee members, for their hard work.

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be able to speak to the report by the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Innovation titled Building Australia’s research capacity. I would like also, as the previous members that have spoken on this report have done, to congratulate and thank the secretariat for their hard work, and I also thank the other members of the committee including the chair, who all put in a significant amount of work.

The committee received submissions and heard evidence from a wide variety of people including universities, students and other research training facilities. There was a lot of diverse information provided to the committee, but at the same time there were a lot of recurring threads throughout the evidence that was provided to the committee. Many of those themes form the basis of our recommendations.

One of the messages coming through loudly is that Australia should not drop the ball on its research or its research capacity. It came through very clearly that we need to be building our research in Australia. We need to continue to strive to be—and this is an old turn of phrase by a previous Prime Minister—the ‘clever country’. This was certainly something that came through in the evidence we heard.

A number of different areas were covered in this report and I will go through each of those areas, highlighting some of the main issues as I see them. The first was research funding, which is of critical importance. The theme that came out of this part of the report is that we do need to fund the real cost of research. This is incredibly important. I want to stress the importance of ensuring that the funding for research provides students with a minimum standard of supervision and resources. The committee heard that some students doing higher degree research had a lot of resources at their disposal that allowed them to pursue their careers, whereas other students perhaps did not have the same level of resources. So ensuring the maintenance of minimum standards of supervision and resources is, I think, of critical importance, and that comes down to us funding the full amount of the cost of research.

Another critical element that emerged in this area of the inquiry is reflected by the committee’s recommendation that research training funding be disbursed partially at the beginning, partially at a specific benchmark and partially at the end. An important point to come through from the universities was that, although they certainly appreciate receiving the funding, it does not necessarily come at the time it is needed, when the student is about to start work and requires the resources for their research project. This is something that would not cost the government any more to remedy but could benefit universities. The other element that came out in this area was the transferral of the research that we do into industry and encouraging those industry partnerships. I know that my local university, the Flinders University of South Australia, is doing a lot of research into medical devices. Certainly that is an area with great potential for transfer into a commercial environment.

The second area of the report looked at support for the students themselves. We have heard a lot about that, including increasing by six months the period of candidature for PhD students and increasing the stipend. The evidence, which formed part of the deliberations of the committee, was quite overwhelming. We do really need to look at the length of PhDs and the level of payment because we are seeing the average time extending well beyond the three years of the stipend and a little beyond the four years of the training candidature. That is most important. Part of the reason for the proposed extension is that a lot of students run out of money, and so it was unanimously agreed by the committee, and certainly by the submissions that we received, that the stipend needed to be increased and regularly adjusted to keep up with the cost of living. So I am very pleased that the committee recommended not only a 50 per cent increase but that it be fully indexed.

The third broad area was attracting students to research training. It was recognised by the universities as well as by the committee that there is a challenge in making research an attractive career path. We need to ensure that our brightest students are attracted to developing the future of our country, so the committee came up with a number of recommendations. Remission of HECS debts for successful research PhD graduates is a very important incentive that could encourage a lot of people to choose a research option. This fits in with the government’s policy of remission of HECS debts for students in areas of need, such as maths, science and early childhood education. This recommendation accords with the direction that this government is taking.

The final area that I want to touch on is promoting research careers. We heard a lot of evidence of bright students being attracted to PhDs, enjoying their PhDs and struggling through on very low incomes but then, when it got to furthering their research careers, deciding that it was not worth going on. They were often snapped up by the private sector. So we need to ensure there is development for research careers. We also heard a lot of evidence that research careers had changed. A lot of research careers were very short term because they were based on some sort of grant or researchers were employed casually by the university. Actually developing these careers is incredibly important. There are a number of recommendations for how, after a student has successfully completed a PhD, they can continue. I would like to draw attention to recommendation 34. It reads:

The Committee recommends that the Australian Government implement a postdoctoral fellowship scheme targeted at early-career researchers who are up to five years out from PhD completion.

That is one of the many recommendations to really promote research careers.

Overall, as the previous speakers have said, there was a lot of enthusiasm in this inquiry. We had very robust debate but in the end came to a solid conclusion and some solid recommendations. This is such an important topic. Australia cannot drop the ball when it comes to research. Therefore, I commend this report and thank everyone involved.

Debate (on motion by Mr Hayes) adjourned.