FASTS  Forum on the Rights and Obligations of Researchers in Universities and Public Sector Research Agencies Received Ministerial Attention. (February 23, 2008)

The Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies (FASTS) yesterday hosted a forum on the rights and obligations of scientists and researchers in universities and public sector research agencies.

The Minister from DIISR (Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research), Senator Kim Carr, was the Keynote Speaker.

His address is available online in PDF format from FASTS or HTML from DIISR but it adds little to what he has already indicated that Kevin Rudd's Labor government does not intend to muzzle researchers in the universities or public sector research agencies, while it does expect them to contribute to public discussion and debate when matters pertinent to fields of their interest are involved, and he reiterated that a set of charters are to be developed to define those rights and obligations. In broad outline:

The charters will be formulated based on six principles. In summary these are:

• Encouragement of debate on scientific and other research issues that are of public interest;
• Independence and integrity of public research institutions in their research activities;
• Government – accountable to Parliament and the people - remains responsible for policy formulation and implementation;
• Open communication, dissemination of information and debate on the findings of research; 
• Recognition of the role for researchers in such communication and debate; and
• The contestability of ideas

Responding to the question as to what interest was shown by government and opposition in the forum, FASTS executive director, Bradley Smith, told TFW that Senator Carr "attended for the period of his own speech -- he had planned to come two hours earlier to listen to some sessions but was caught up," and a prior interstate engagement precluded his remaining afterwards. Mr Smith, however, pointed out that a long term Carr advisor was present for the whole of the forum and two others of his staff attended for a part of it. All up "there were 7 people from DIISR and DEEWR (Julia Gillard's Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations) for varying parts of yesterday's forum, as well as Ministerial staff."

In addition  "Eric Abetz's advisor was also present for the day".

Senator Abetz is Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research.

Mr Smith also told TFW:

I think it is going to be really interesting to see how Carr's agenda plays out. He emphasises that scientists and researchers have an obligation to speak in the public domain in areas where they have expertise and stressed that publicly funded scientists/researchers are already paid to do that: "its their job".

This opens an interesting fault line with academic culture. Most in the university sector would say they are funded for teaching and research and success in research is the dominant way that performance and promotion is assessed and achieved.

There is an interesting question as to what extent institutions will recognise, reward and support their researchers in public debates.

Carr did remind us that the Government is committed to developing funding compacts to replace the existing funding arrangements for universities. Perhaps funding compacts will provide an opportunity to rethink rewards because the compacts probably will explicitly include community engagement and knowledge transfer as adding to the teaching and research missions of universities”.

Earlier this month Senator Carr, in a speech to an ANU retreat of senior staff, said mission-based compacts would "help manage the transition from the present centralised system to a more flexible environment in which each university can respond to the needs of its students, its community, the country and the global knowledge economy by exploiting its comparative advantages, by leading with its strongest suit."

Luke Slattery in the February 13 Australian's Higher Education Section reported: "It is understood the Government plans to use the compacts, a method of soft regulation increasingly common in the US, to allocate an additional 11,000 commonwealth supported places together with recurrent expenditure and research infrastructure, in an environment of greater institutional differentiation."

But a compact or any other device a government providing significant funding develops can be as proscriptive as it chooses.

To what degree Labor ultimately decides to micromanage the universities or the public sector research institutes will become apparent before the end of the year.