The Marionette Master Continues to Pull the Strings of a Yet to be Still Born ERA. (September 9, 2009)

This morning Federal Senator Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, dropped in on the "National Academies Forum Symposium on ERA" at University House, The Australian National University to tell them a few facts of political life.

Excellence in Research for Australia is absolutely central to the Government’s plans

to strengthen Australia’s research and innovation capacity.

And speaking as the school master to the new boys on day one:

We are determined to be straight with you, but we expect you to be straight with us as well.
    This is the spirit underpinning virtually all of our higher education reforms, including:

• the new, more generous arrangements for funding research,

• mission-based funding compacts,

• and Excellence in Research for Australia.

Senator Carr continued: "[O]ne of the seven National Innovation Priorities in the Government’s innovation strategy, Powering Ideas, is to get Australian researchers and businesses involved in more international collaborations on research and development." [but see news__views_item_sep_2009-090909.htm].

Senator Carr also told the attendees: "Excellence in Research for Australia will further our international objectives by giving us a clear picture of what Australian researchers can do and measuring our performance against world benchmarks. It will build on the brand recognition Australia already enjoys thanks to the efforts of outstanding individual researchers and institutions – by identifying, demonstrating and inspiring excellence across the sector."

What a load of rhetorical nonsense, "Brand Recognition" indeed.

If the peer review systems of the ARC and the NHMRC are inadequate just how much value added will an ERA be when looking in hindsight to award block grants?

Wouldn't the nation be better served if the government worked with the research granting agencies to fund more cogently, researchers who are Australia's best at what they do, that is if you want to build positive "Brand Recognition". In short commit resources to get it right in the first place. To suggest that a politically controlled, bureaucratically enforced second-guessing exercise is a solution is an oxymoron.

So far the current government admits to have committed $35.8 million over four years to develop, trial and implement ERA. And that takes no account of the hours spent by academic researchers and administrators on the exercise.

 As though Senator Carr has been entrusted to deliver the stone tablets from Mt Sinai we are told:

ERA will evaluate the quality of Australian research and guide future investment.

Once it has been fully tested and bedded down, it will inform the performance component of the Sustainable Research Excellence in Universities Program.

It will ensure that taxpayers are getting value for their very considerable investment in university research.

And in his admonition to the assemblage the senator delivered a classic non sequitur:

The ERA trial being conducted by the ARC this year has produced some stunning results.

Every institution that does research in Physical, Chemical and Earth Science submitted data for Cluster One of the trial – that’s thirty-nine universities out of forty-one.

More than 40,000 research outputs were submitted for this cluster.

All forty-one institutions submitted data for Cluster Two, which covers the Humanities and Creative Arts.

More than 47,000 research outputs were submitted, including around 7,000 original creative works.

This highlights the scale of the task we have set ourselves, but it also confirms why it is necessary.

It does nothing of the sort but merely indicates that an awful lot of person hours were expended.

It is at least as likely that all those submissions were made out of fear of retribution rather than belief in the ERA being worthwhile.