Sarah Henderson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I take from your answer, Assistant Minister, that you're not willing to give a direct answer in relation to my question about Labor's commitment to increase research funding to three per cent of GDP. I remind you that the coalition, when last in government, invested very heavily in university research and research more broadly through the university research commercialisation package, which was a $2.2 billion investment and a very important investment not just for universities, not just for the research sector, but for our nation. It is most regrettable that while the government did adopt that package, it's started to cut into that package by cutting $46.2 million from Australia's Economic Accelerator program.

We know, we understood, and we continue to prosecute the case that research funding is no good if it sits in the bottom drawer. Research papers are no good if they don't get commercialised, if they don't lead to better outcomes for our country, particularly when we are talking about taxpayers' money here, Minister. This is of critical importance. I can tell you one of the very substantial programs that universities are continuing to celebrate is the $243 million Trailblazer Universities Program, which is boosting research and development in a number of universities after a competitive tender and driving commercialisation outcomes and also driving enormous matching investments and more from industry. This has been a monumentally successful program. We have seen nothing like this from this government. In fact, the government was so mean to the research sector that in this bill alone it cuts some $1.5 million from the Australian Research Council. It is taking that money, which would otherwise be used for research, to establish the board and for the other administrative purposes of the bill.

So I think it's fair to say that, while I accept that that research stakeholders want all of the decision-making ability in their own hands, despite the merits of research projects, the research sector has been scathing about the government's decision to cut $1.5 million from the Australian Research Council to fund the mechanisms in your bill. The government could not even find that money, let alone the $102 million that it's cut from research.

I want to move to the board arrangements. Could you please tell the Senate what the role of the CEO will be? Will the CEO report to the board?