A Senate committee is accepting submissions on a bill by Senator Faruqi (Greens NSW) to prevent minister’s rejecting research grants approved by the Australian Research Council

One, from the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, states that every vetoed grant was of HASS research. Stuart Robert rejected six recommendations in December, Dan Tehan said no to five in 2020 and Simon Birmingham overturned 11 in 2018.

“The distribution of funding for research is most likely to be beneficial to Australia when it is driven by decisions made by people who have the information, experience, and expertise to judge the quality of research questions, methods, and likely outcomes,” CHASS president, Dan Woodman states.

Which may not bother ministers past and present. As the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities puts it, Mr Robert’s veto, “signals the continued disregard for important areas of Australia’s intellectual culture and life,” (CMM January 24).