Research grant approvals and uni casual pay could come up

Its Senate Estimates week with education, skills and employment portfolio officials and agency managers on Thursday.

CMM is looking forward to 8.15 pm (AE summer time) Thursday when the Australia Research Council appears. But probably not as much as ARC officials, who are undoubtedly hoping to be asked questions about the impact of the brief inclusion of a ban on references to pre-prints in grant applications.

The other must-watch will be the Fair Work Ombudsman, (7.30pm, Wednesday). A couple of weeks ago agency chief Sandra Parker told a Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency event that FWO is investigating 14 universities over staff payment practises.

“We will take a firm approach with those who do not cooperate with us. We are investigating in technology and data analytics to assess compliance on a large scale. We can and will undertake independent validation or recalculations,” Ms Parker said (CMM October 11).

Senators might be interested to know how all that is going.