Pessimists suggest the feds are getting all the good research funding announcements out ahead of cuts to come in December’s mid-year economic forecast. Optimists say Simon Birmingham is still signed-on to the prime minister’s innovation agenda.

Whatever the reason, the education minister and the Australian Research Council were out  with the ceremonial scissors at everything they could get a ribbon around.  And this morning big ARC grants are announced (below).

Yesterday Senator Birmingham was at Swinburne U to open the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery. On Wednesday, he was at Deakin U to open the ARC Training Centre in Alloy Innovation for Mining Efficiency. But because the ARC Centre for Tardis Construction is yet to deliver Senator Birmingham wasn’t at the same-day launch of the ARC Industrial Transformation Training Centre in Biopharmaceutical Innovation at the University of Queensland or the ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems, also at the University of Queensland.

That’s a lot of science openings, question is whether the ceremonial scissors come before a funding axe