The late show with the ARC  

The Australian Research Council did not get the call at Senate Estimates until 10.45pm, Thursday night

Perhaps unsurprisingly, questions were brief. Senator Faruqi (Greens, NSW) wanted to know if Education Minister Alan Tudge had knocked back two ARC-recommended Linkage projects, “Visualising humanitarian crises” and “Sparking imagination education: transforming inequality in school.” “There are decisions still pending on those two projects” ARC CEO Sue Thomas said.   As to why, “that would be a question for the minister,” Professor Thomas added. It was taken on-notice.

Senator Pratt (Labor, WA) asked about research funding in the absence of international student fees and Professor Thomas said reported data was not complete but took questions on notice. Senator Pratt also asked about security of research with international partners and appeared satisfied with the ARC response, (they, in cooperation with unis, have it covered).

But CMM had brief expectations of her last question, about a petition (in the form of a budget submission) from 1000 researchers asking the minister to “improve aspects of the ARC’s processes”

The three specifics the ARC is considering are calls for “a fairer, more efficient system for responding to peer reviews,” putting “on-notice” “inappropriate and unprofessional reviewers” and updated security for the Research Management System and email notification of research applicants

“We are always interested in harvesting good ideas,” Professor Thomas said.

“What we do is the test the hypothesis that they are low-cost or no-cost from the inside out but they are the types of things that we engage with the sector on, with research officers, with members of the Australian Research Management Society and indeed with individual researchers. We will work through our normal processes,” she concluded.

Good-o but “normal processes” is surely where the petitioners’ problems came from.

And that, at 10.58pm was that.