First review in two decades found at least six projects blocked by education ministers and calls for limits on ministerial intervention
Trust in the Australian Research Council has been “dramatically eroded” by controversial grant decisions made by formerThe review, released by the education minister Jason Clare on Thursday, called for more “checks and balances” on the power of ministerial intervention, limiting it to “the extraordinary circumstance of a potential threat to national security”.
Other than Tehan’s intervention in 2020 “for national security concerns”, it said the projects blocked by Brendan Nelson , Birmingham and acting minister Robert “were rejected reportedly on the grounds of poor value for money”. Blocked grants were a “widespread source of despair, particularly acute in the humanities in which the majority of the cancelled projects were focused”, it said.
The review recommended that individual national competitive grants program projects should not require approvals by the minister, with decisions left to the ARC, which is “best placed to judge the intrinsic merit of the proposals”.
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