Kim Carr's Relentless Drive for Mediocrity has the Inertia of a Celestial Body. (July 23, 2008)

No one can doubt the staying power of the Labor Senator from Victoria and Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Kim Carr. He is reminiscent of Britain's Tory Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, in that he to "is not for turning".

Speaking to a closed Group of Eight conference last week Senator Carr alluding to his vision of institutional hubs and spokes said he reserved "the right to propose additional arrangements should there be gaps in areas of national significance", which to his audience must have sounded more threat than promise. "Where we locate hubs is a matter for negotiation. When (the) Excellence in Research Australia (exercise) is up and running, we could use it to identify new hubs and make existing hubs accountable," and then added, "We'd welcome your thoughts on that."

Commenting on the Senator's utterances, The Australian's Guy Healy said: "The minister's speech sheds more light on the link between Labor's two contentious research policies. The comments are significant because they assign a potentially powerful new role to the Government's ERA: not just rating the country's research departments but formally identifying the top one or two research departments, or hubs, in a discipline."

Matters didn't appear to improve when the Minister said that he was increasingly concerned that Australia's spending on tertiary institutions and research and development was slipping behind the rest of the world, especially the exploding research outlays of China and India.

Senator Carr's solution?

Australia has to concentrate its resources and set priorities: "We can't afford to fund every research idea people come up with, even if the quality of the research promises to be high."

Hell, they're not funding one in five research ideas ARC and NH&MRC grant applicants submit, just what sort of a mind set has the man Prime minister Rudd put in charge of Science and Research got?

Which brings us back once again to Brian Cox, professor of particle physics at Manchester University: "The notion that scientists will make a more valuable contribution to the economic and social wellbeing of the world if their research is closely directed by politicians is the most astonishing piece of nonsense I have had the misfortune to come across in a long time."

But to quote Mehitabel

wotthehell wotthehell