Sector applauds O'Kane report

PEAK bodies were quick to endorse Mary O'Kane's review of co-operative research centres, released yesterday.

In the first report to Innovation Minister Kim Carr's inquiry into the nation's research effort, Professsor O'Kane recommends injecting funding into the system to allow it to respond to changing market circumstances and to address urgent and emerging community issues.

But Professor O'Kane rejects any idea of CRCs becoming permanent organisations and she criticises the program's past performance.

"The review," she writes "has concentrated on exploring why a program that was initially popular and well regarded has declined in appeal to research providers and not attracted firms in sufficient numbers to generate innovation on a whole-of-industry basis".

Funding the CRC program was "money well spent -- but it could be spent better", she told Higher Education yesterday.

Among the 22 recommendations, Professor O'Kane calls for commonwealth grants to be set at a maximum of $45 million over 10years.

And in a significant change of direction from the Howard government's emphasis on commercial-orientated research, Professor O'Kane calls for funding to be aligned to the "level of likely induced social benefit", with a public good selection criterion, "particularly in areas of social justice and social service".

The review also suggests broadening the program's scope from the existing emphasis on science and engineering to include the humanities and social sciences, "as the boundaries between the liberal arts and social sciences are increasingly blurred in multidisciplinary solutions, for which humanities and social science input is vital".

Welcoming the report, Senator Carr told the HES that Professor O'Kane's report "is an endorsement of the program. She says CRCs are money well spent and I could not agree with her more."

The Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies praised the report. "One positive outcome of the focus on end-users identifying risks and challenges that require research, is the prospect of greater demand-side capabilities in industry, government and community sectors," FASTS president Ken Baldwin said.

The reports was also endorsed by the Australian Technology Network universities. ATN chairwoman Margaret Gardner said the group supported the view "that CRCs should be positioned in the pre-competitive, pre-applicative space rather than the current emphasis on exploitation-commercialisation of research outcomes".

And Michael Hartmann, chairman of the CRC umbrella organisation, told HES he was "quite pleased" with the O'Kane report, calling it "a major step in the right direction". "Australians are very good at getting on with the job and working together for the common good," he said.

In the CRC program's 18-year life, about 168 CRCs have received $3billion in commonwealth funding, plus contributions in cash and kind from universities and other public and private sector providers.