By 2008, these proposals would increase total funding provided by the RTS, IGS and RIBG [Research Infrastructure Block Grant] from just over $1.025 billion in 2004 to around $1.52 billion in 2008.

The AVCC, however, make the specific recommendation that the Research Infrastructure Block Grant allocation should not be subject to the RQF and continue to be allocated on the basis of income from National Competitive Grants programs.

And in opposition to governmental micromanagement it favours that the basic level of assessment should be research groupings determined by each university, based on provision by the research grouping of relevant evidence about research outcomes, and that funding distributed via the RQF should be allocated to institutions to be allocated internally according to their own processes and priorities.

In its final two recommendations the AVCC states: that Expert Panels assess research quality, research impact, and research training, on the basis of relevant information
and data provided by universities. Expert Panels’ assessments should be based on the judgement of the members, and that the ratings of quality, impact and research
training be weighted by a rating for the amount of research by the research grouping and the relative cost of research in each Panel’s area.

The formula proposed  is given by:

Apart from its recommendations, the AVCC's submission makes a number of specific points.

• Research for business and community groups is mostly work directed towards solving particular problems, or meeting particular needs and is mostly project driven. In addition, much of the research supported by the ARC and the NHMRC grants is also project-driven. In all but a very small number of cases, the funding for project-focused research does not meet the full costs of the project. These costs include equipment, personnel, consumables, and various essential resources.
       The gap between project funding and project costs is met by funding from universities’ research block grants.

• Since it is not targeted at short-term problem solving, basic research in Australia rarely attracts private sector investment, whose target is more defined. Some basic research is supported by project grants from the ARC or NHMRC, but in most cases it is only possible to carry out such research because of universities capacity to support such research.

• Research block funding has three important functions: it provides core research capacity, for universities to meet the research needs
  of industry, Government, and the community; it provides flexibility, so that universities can adapt as these needs change, and it allows anticipation, so that universities can meet the needs of the future.

• The RQF should produce evidence of the excellence of research carried out in Australia’s universities, thereby providing the Government with the basis to increase its investment in universities’ core research capacity.

• It is not enough for the RQF to be used to distribute existing research block funding... A modest reallocation of funding among universities driven by the results of an RQF is not sufficient cause to justify the effort.

• ...the main driver for changing from present [assessment]  arrangements is concern that the existing metric-driven assessment of university research performance does not effectively take account of qualitative differences in research output. To move beyond this requires a judgement of the quality and impact using relevant data, not the reverse.

Whether or not the thought and effort put into this submission by the AVCC will be justified by the outcomes obtained in the Department of Education, Science and Training's design for the Research Quality Framework should be known by year's end.