Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, About to Get International Recognition. (January 14, 2005)

    One December 15 last year The Australian carried an article by Dorothy Illing  that the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, and to whom the Australian Research Council (ARC) is responsible, had overridden the assessment of ARC peer reviewers and canned several approved research grants.

Next week, according to the Australian Financial Review's  Sophie Morris, the vice-chancellor of Sydney University, Gavin Brown, will allude to the matter in his address to the inaugural Global Colloquium of University Presidents, which will be hosted by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, at New York's Columbia University. Mr Annan will chair plenary sessions on academic freedom and on managing international migration.

Professor Brown told the Financial Review, "I think the appropriate thing is for peer review to be respected. It's a very slippery slope if one has any kind of veto power. I believe there have been cases of particular grants being vetoed at the last moment, despite having gone through all the recommendations of the peer-review process. I believe that is wrong."

He went on to tell Morris that newly introduced  regulations increases, under the new funding regime introduced by Dr. Nelson allows the Department of Education, Science and Training to determine how many students are taught in each discipline at each university. "I believe it's actually quite legitimate for funders to be concerned about accountability of how their funds are spent, but what I don't think is reasonable is that they get close to micromanaging how their funds are spent."

While Gavin Brown, a canny Scot, seldom goes public; when he does, he's usually direct in his utterances. "One of the dangers in a developed economy is that universities conceptualise themselves partly as businesses, which of course you must, but you must never lose sight of the core objectives of the university, and absolutely fundamental to that is academic freedom."

He also said that he believed that on balance Australian universities had a, "workable amount of substantive, procedural and organic autonomy."