Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the Australian Research Council Amendment (Review Response) Bill 2023. It's always a pleasure to follow my colleague from Western Australia Senator O'Sullivan. I too wish to go through some of the issues Senator O'Sullivan raised, particularly to challenge some of the straw men that Senator Faruqi raised in her contribution earlier—the idea that those on this side of the chamber are somehow anti arts and anti arts research. This is just an absolute nonsense. I stand here as the holder of an honours degree in history—something I am very proud of. In fact, my dissertation probably qualifies in the slightly wonky, slightly nerdy category. It was looking at the political historiography of the American Revolution. So it's not something that's everybody's cup of tea, and I understand that, but I do absolutely value arts research. It is something that is highly valued.

But what we have here is an organisation that has direct responsibility for looking at how government research dollars are spent. Government research dollars are not the only research dollars within the funding pool of research dollars; there are other sources of funding, including philanthropy and including university direct grants. What we have here through the ARC is a set of grants that must always be about the priorities of Australia as a nation and making sure that limited dollars—and it is a limited dollar pool; it can never be as much money as everyone would perhaps like it to be—are spent in a way that is in our national interest. It's a broad definition of 'national interest', as Senator O'Sullivan read it out, but it is important that, through that process of spending taxpayers' money, there are suitable accountability mechanisms and we do not merely say that handing this off to an unelected group of five, six or seven people is an acceptable outcome.

The fact is that in these decision-making organisations there can be groupthink. There can be small circles of people, particularly in certain niche research areas, where the peer group is so small that any idea of independence disappears out the window. If you have a small group of unelected people making decisions in this space, you do risk undermining the confidence the Australian people will have in our research system. Rather than enhancing it, which is supposedly what those opposite want to do, you actually risk undermining it, because things of questionable value will slip through.

Ministerial discretion, as Senator O'Sullivan outlined very clearly, has been used on a merely a handful of occasions in the course of the history of the Australian Research Council. It is not something that was used on a daily basis. It was not something that was used to control, direct or interfere with the ARC. It was used on a very small number of occasions where clear issues were raised about whether particular research was of sufficient value to the Australian community to warrant—I ask all those listening to remember this—taxpayer funding of that research. The ARC is in a very difficult position because it's got to balance the nuts and bolts of practical research that can have a positive outcome on people's lives—things like health research that can make a literal life-or-death difference to people in this country and right around the world through flow-on effects—with studies in, perhaps, less immediately impactful fields such as the arts. So it is completely legitimate for ministerial discretion to be exercised in such cases where there is no obvious benefit to the Australian community through the research being undertaken.

Senator O'Sullivan read out some of the titles of those that had been rejected. Again, that is not to say these projects weren't—you know, somebody had a passion for these projects, and good on them for having a passion for these projects. The question is not that. The question is not whether individual academics had a passion for these projects. The question is whether these projects were of benefit to the Australian community. 'Spectacles, dress and second-wave feminism in the Philippines'—it's hard to see. I admit I haven't read the abstract of that research project, but, given that it went through a ministerial reassessment, I find it absolutely conceivable that a minister could determine that that project wasn't in the best interests of or didn't add value to the Australian community.

Again, that is not to say that project shouldn't go ahead. If a researcher has passion for it, there are philanthropic pathways to get academic research dollars and there are pathways through universities to get academic research dollars. That project could well have gone ahead. But did it pass that threshold test that we talked about of being of benefit to the Australian community? Remember, in a limited pool of funding, that project is going up against projects in the health space which can have real-life impacts, life-and-death impacts, on people. It's going up against projects in the industrial space which may see breakthroughs in technology that benefit not just Australians but people right around the world. So it is quite legitimate to say that ministerial oversight, which is in practice extraordinarily rarely used, is worthwhile keeping in the system. It is not good enough to say: 'Here's a billion dollars. We're going to hand this off to an unelected group of individuals with no parliamentary oversight.'

Senator Faruqi talked about removing the right of this chamber to scrutinise the legislative instruments associated with the Australian Research Council grant guidelines. I think that's an absolutely appropriate right for this chamber to have. If those grant guidelines were, for example, biased in one direction, then this chamber should not only scrutinise those guidelines but have the right to reject those guidelines. To say otherwise is to abrogate the power of this parliament. It's lessening the power and responsibility of the minister to do his or her duty in ensuring that taxpayers' dollars are spent in the most effective way possible for and on behalf of the taxpayers of Australia and the whole Australian community. I think that that is a path we should be very wary of going down.

Research and development, basic research, is of fundamental importance. Ensuring that we have the best possible system with appropriate checks and balances and appropriate ministerial oversight is absolutely essential. One of the great ironies of this bill that the government has put forward is that the minister has retained the ability to approve grants in other designated programs such as the ARC Centres of Excellence, the Industrial Transformation Training Centres and the Industrial Transformation Research Hubs. This has never adequately been explained to me: why is it good enough to retain that discretion in those areas but not in terms of the ARC grants, particularly when we have on the record examples—Senator O'Sullivan went through some of them, and I mentioned another one—of things that are hard to justify as adding value to the Australian community and there are limited research dollars available?