MINISTRY CHAOS EXTENDS BEYOND EDUCATION

13-September-2010

Universities are rightly worried about the lack of focus on higher education in Labor’s new Ministry, but the Opposition fears this is only one of many bad omens for the innovation portfolio.

The portfolio (which was previously titled Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) no longer has a Parliamentary Secretary assisting the Minister. The element of research has also been removed from its name, and does not appear elsewhere on the revised Ministerial list.

Both of these changes represent disturbing signs about the Government’s intentions.

It is so far unclear what the removal of ‘research’ from the portfolio title might say about a possible downgrading of attention to higher education research activity. But the elimination of a Parliamentary Secretary is clearly a grave development given that Minister Kim Carr needs as much help as possible after an atrocious first three years in the job.

Mr Carr has presided over an appalling change of culture in the portfolio that has seen his Government return to the directionless, big spending and wasteful ways of previous Labor administrations.

Among many lowlights in his first three years, he:

• attempted to force changes to government support for research and development (R&D) that have provoked industry outrage, and led one observer to conclude that they would have resulted in “the worst environment for Government support for R&D in this country for the past 25 years” (Source: ARN Review, ‘Firestorm of criticism against Government R&D changes’, 12 January 2010);
• slashed support for commercialisation activity, leaving this crucial phase of the innovation process chronically under-assisted for more than two years;
• politicised the fields of science and research; and
• established review panels often stacked with Labor mates.

Mr Carr’s first term as Minister was also marked by falling productivity and the worrying loss of more than 73,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector – a trend that was only made worse by his infamous comment that no Australian should consider their job to be safe.

Australian industry and the country’s innovation, science and research communities have every right to expect far better from the Gillard Government, but the early signs are extremely inauspicious.