LABOR PROMISES TO REVITALISE AUSTRALIAN RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
28 September 2004
Labor’s research and innovation policy offers an all of community plan to revitalise Australia’s flagging research and development effort, including lifting our national investment in research to the OECD average and initiatives to support early and mid-term researchers, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) said on Tuesday.
“While Labor’s research policy essentially redirects funding provided under the Coalitions’ Backing Australia’s Ability package, the NTEU welcomes Labor’s recognition that our R&D effort is lagging and supports its determination to meet OECD average levels of investment by 2015,” said Dr Carolyn Allport, NTEU National President.
“The latest data shows that Australia spends about 1.6% of GDP on R&D, well below the OECD average of 2.3%.”
“The NTEU welcomes Labor’s commitment of providing more money for university infrastructure, including lifting funding for Research Infrastructure Block Grants from 20 to 25 cents in the dollar.”
“Particularly positive is Labor’s emphasis on early and mid-career researchers, an area that has been almost completely ignored by the current Government, but which is of vital importance given the demographic challenges facing our research community.”
“Given that 72% of university academics are currently over 40 years of age, Australia desperately needs policies that nurture the next generation of researchers.”
“Labor’s initiatives in this area include the abolition of the dysfunctional and widely unpopular Research Training Scheme and its replacement with new Commonwealth Research Scholarships which run for four years instead of three, 300 new fellowships for young and promising researchers, and 600 fellowships aimed at keeping mid-career researchers in Australia.”
“The NTEU believes that on balance, Labor’s policy would see funding being directed to those areas that have the capacity to most enhance our national research.”
“As part of this, the policy achieves a much better funding balance between the various components of our research effort. While there are measures to encourage business involvement and investment in R&D, unlike the Coalition, these do not come at the expense of other players such as universities and publicly funded research agencies such as the CSIRO.”
“The Union will undertake an in depth analysis of all the aspects of Labor’s research policy and the funding attached to it,” said Dr Allport.
“The NTEU is particularly keen to get details from Labor on their version of the research assessment exercise, given the expense and bureaucratic complexity of similar process tried overseas.”
Information and Comment:
Dr Carolyn Allport, NTEU President: 0419 349 064
Andrew Nette, NTEU Policy and Research Coordinator: 0438 026 277