The CRC lobby calls for the budget to, “continue to grow investment in industry-led research and innovation.” Isn’t that what the new and nearly $2bn Australia’s Economic Accelerator programme supposed to do?

Cooperative Research Australia wants, among other things, $50m more a year over the forward estimates for Cooperative Research Centres and (specific problem addressing) CRC Ps.

No harm in asking, but the CRC programme has had a bunch of its lunch eaten by the Accelerator.

As applied and industry linked research goes it is hard to beat 30-plus years of CRCs, which are JVs between industry and universities designed to “provide funding for collaborations to solve industry identified problems.”

Granted the intention for the Accelerator is to turn research into products that grow the economy but this is not an impossible shift for the CRC model. As David Miles said in the most recent independent review, “retaining the CRC programme as a stand-alone programme serves to put science at the centre of industry policy,” (CMM May 20 2015)

But CRCs as a policy do not rate in the Accelerator Plan, which focuses on funding for university-based researchers, CSIRO and industry experts.