NewsVET & TAFE
Naked Gun 33 1/3 – The Final Insult
Australia’s bumbling approach to engagement and collaboration conjures up the inept Frank Drebin, only this isn’t a comedy. By JP Viljoen.
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It is great to see a focus on the need for an overall national approach to this, as opposed to the piecemeal approach of “university staff should be encouraged to collaborate with industry” – which adds pressure to researchers without any empowerment.
There appears to be a relative lack of venture capital in Australia – and relatively few large industries interested in funding strategic research in Australia. Perhaps this is because many large buisnesses are overseas -based, while the small Australian businesses that drive innovation here are seldom organised together sufficiently to enable them to invest in research.
There is one area of Australian industry where industry focused research has a long and fruitful history – the primary industry sector, due to the Rural Research and Development Corporations. These were set up to collect funds from the industry stakeholders, and then fund research tailored to the needs of primary producers. Until recently they have been very successful. Researchers from Universities, state research institutes and CSIRO competed to design and undertake research projects supported in kind by industry stakeholders, to enhance production, products and marketing. I have been involved in many such projects for the fishing industry and the Aquaculture industry.
But the advent of the “National Primary Industries Research Development and Extension Framework has led to the creation of “Centres of Excellence’ in one or two states for each primary industry, usually state run institutes, that are now the ‘default’ recipients of the funds for projects in each primary industry. The result has been a reduction in competition, and less opportunity incentive for university researchers in particular, to contribute in this area.
Perhaps what we need is some scheme to encourage small businesses in each sector to collaborate to run research and development committees along similar lines to the original RDCs, to fund projects that must be undertaken with industry collaboration, and to encourage open competition between research organisations for funding.
Perhaps Universities could look to their internal policies as well. One of my acquaintance recently brought in a policy that all profits earned by academics from research consultancies would be taken by the unit to which the academic belonged. The academics would then have to beg for the use of just some of the money, which had previously been used to support their research, research students, and development of tenders for more contracts and research grant applications. Of course, this wiped out any motivation for tendering for contracts, and the result has been a falling-off in the number (though not the amount in dollars because of a few large contracts). A method of collaboration spread across a wide range of academic disciplines has therefore been reduced.