Kim Carr to Announce Members of New ARC Advisory Panel. (January 7, 2008)

The Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (DIISR), Kim Carr is set to appoint a six member advisory panel for the Australian Research Council (ARC), ostensibly with the aim of nurturing the independence of the ARC. According to Senator Carr it is to be a replacement for the ARC Board which was disbanded by Brendan Nelson when he was Minister for Education, Science and Training in John Howard's government, a move to bring the ARC under more direct ministerial control.

However, Senator Carr made it clear that the Labor government intends to retain the right to guide the ARC in its decision-making, but will state its reasoning in doing so.

Toss Gascoigne, Executive Director of CHASS (the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences) commenting on the announcement said the appropriate role of the Minister is to lay down the broad strategy and appoint the right people to run the organisation: "But funding decisions should be left to the ARC. It's their job to choose and then fund the work of the best people with the best ideas."

Time will tell to what degree micromanagement will prevail under the guiding hand of the good senator.

He told The Age's Katharine Murphy that research was not "a political plaything to be toyed with at the whim of the government. The Rudd Labor Government is committed to improve the integrity of Australia's research funding system and one way of doing this is to ensure that the ARC has access to high-quality advice from across the research sector."

One thing is immediately apparent, the six members Senator Carr has chosen for the new ARC panel have disparate interests and expertise.

• Professor Stuart Macintyre -- Stuart Macintyre is Ernst Scott Professor of History at The University of Melbourne with research interests principally in Australian history. His current projects include the history of communism in Australia, the role of the social sciences, and the role and status of history.

• Professor Terry Hughes -- Terry Hughes is Professor in the School of Marine Biology and Aquiculture at James Cook University. A Federation Fellow from 2002-2007 his research interests are in community and population ecology, especially of clonal animals, particularly corals. His work has focussed on the dynamics of coral populations, and the evolutionary ecology of their life histories.

• Dr Elizabeth Jazwinska -- Before joining Johnson & Johnson Research Pty Ltd, in 2007 Dr Jazwinska was a senior research fellow at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane with research interests in human genetic disorders.

• Professor John Ralston -- John Ralston is Director, Ian Wark Research Institute at the University of South Australia and  Laureate Professor of Physical Chemistry and Minerals Processing whose research interests embrace various aspects of interfacial science and engineering.

• Professor Margaret Seares -- Margaret Seares is the Senior Deputy Vice Chancellor at The University of Western Australia. She holds a PhD from UWA in Music, her field of specialty being the keyboard music of the 18^th century. From 1991-1995 she was Head of the School of Music, and Deputy Chair of the Academic Board at UWA.

• Professor Arun Sharma -- Arun Sharma is the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Commercialisation) at the Queensland University of Technology. He is also the President of the Australia India Business Council (Queensland Chapter). His particular interest has been in the development of national research capacity in information and communications technology. He was co-founder of National ICT Australia Limited (NICTA) and was the inaugural director of its Sydney Research Laboratory.

Will these six act as a useful buffer between DIISR and the ARC in dissuading Senator Carr from perpetrating excesses of control?