18th Mar 2024, 2:30 PM – Senate Australian Research Council Amendment (Review Response) Bill 2023 - in Committee - Designated research programs

The majority voted against an amendment introduced by NSW Senator Mehreen Faruqi (Greens), which means it failed.

What does this amendment do?

Senator Faruqi explained that, together with another amendment, this amendment would:

remove the minister's power to specify designated research programs in regulations under which funding for individual research projects is decided solely by the minister and not by the ARC board. While these regulations would be disallowable, significant concerns have been raised by universities, university peak bodies and researchers that this risks the minister taking sole decision-making power over a very wide range of funding decisions on individual grants.

Amendment text

(1) Schedule 3, item 2, page 20 (lines 18 and 19), omit paragraph (d) of the definition of designated research program.

Current text of item 2

designated research program means the following research programs:

(a) the research program known as the ARC Centres of Excellence scheme;

(b) the research program known as the Industrial Transformation Training Centres scheme;

(c) the research program known as the Industrial Transformation Research Hubs scheme;

(d) any other research program specified in an instrument under subsection (2).