On Friday afternoon Minister Tehan released the 2021 Discovery Grants round, with $255m being shared by 591 projects

The education minister also announced $26m for 60 research programmes under the Linkage Scheme.

Later Friday the Australian Research Council released a list of all the awards so far, which is useful for people who want to look up specific projects but not for anybody interested to know how all institutions, states and disciplines fared.

The reason there are just two lists is that the Minister has reserved decisions on 18 grants, “pending further advice to the ARC from security agencies.”

Perhaps this includes ones will come up in the new inquiry on foreign interference on campus being undertaken by the parliamentary intel committee – just probably not publicly.

The ARC says it will provide numbers on success rates by state, institution and discipline, “once all projects funded under this scheme are announced.”

So why not wait to then for a complete announcement? Perhaps because the Senate specifies how long the minister can wait before announcing grants after the ARC sends recommendations and time could have been up.