Academy of Social Sciences in Australia
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President's Report
Fay Gale
Reconciliation and the Academy
This year, 1999, the last of the millennium, will be a very important year for the social sciences.
We closed last year, the penultimate year of this millennium, very appropriately with a symposium on reconciliation. Many social scientists, both indigenous and non-indigenous, participated.
It was a time to look back with shame on many of the attitudes and actions of Australians since Europeans first arrived and began to take the land, livelihood and lives of the original owners of this continent. But it was also a time to look forward with hope. Much has been achieved and many attitudes have been changed.
From the 1960s onwards there has been a steady recognition of indigenous people in this country and a realisation that they had rights and deserved fair and equal opportunities with other Australians.
The 1990s have seen an acceleration of acceptance by governments and people generally. Bringing Them Home, the report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families, known popularly as the stolen generation; the Mabo decision; the National Native Title Tribunal; the Wik legislation; and the initiation last year of Sorry Day all show substantial changes in the attitudes of non-indigenous Australians to the descendants of the original owners of this land.
We must ensure that the momentum gained in the last decade of this millennium is carried forward as we look to further changes and greater reconciliation in the early years of the new millennium.
The symposium took one aspect of the broad topic of reconciliation and dealt with the responsibility and role of social scientists in influencing tertiary education. Where do universities stand on these issues? What are social scientists in particular doing to ensure that greater intellectual content is added to the debate?
It cannot be left to the press or politicians or public servants to determine what are the key issues of reconciliation and how they should be addressed. In the Academy we represent a broad range of scholarship at a high level, bringing together the best brains of the country to deal with these issues. We need to be at the forefront of policy formulation based on accurate and empathic research. As the Academy led in the past through the Rowley years, I hope it will do so again in this time of considerable change and great challenge.
The issues today are very different from those discussed in the Rowley publications. Many of the issues which he highlighted have been dealt with. But there are now many more and in many ways they are more complex. They are truly related to the whole identity of Australia. No longer is the Australian population made up of just a dominant culture, primarily British, and the indigenous inhabitants. The complexity of today's multicultural Australia has very much influenced our identity as Australians and our interactions between different groups of Australians.
The symposium sought to draw out some of these complexities and to look particularly at the role of academics in dealing with them. I hope the Academy will be able to carry forward the momentum of that significant and timely symposium.
The future of social science research in Australia
Social scientists are dependent to a large degree upon the Australian Research Council to fund research beyond the small level of infrastructure support available in academic institutions in this country. It is therefore of great concern to us that the future of the ARC is in doubt. A draft paper circulated to only a select few at the end of last year suggested considerable changes, placing much more emphasis on direct funding to universities rather than through a body primarily using peer review.
High quality research of international standing requires top level assessment in the allocation of funds. Its funding must go to the most competent researchers and not be distributed on institutional equity or other such considerations. The present complaints of the ARC are understandable. When I was first elected President of the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee, I was given a valuable piece of advice. I was advised to 'never get between a Vice-Chancellor and a bag of money'. In many ways this is exactly what the ARC does. Instead of all of the research money going direct to universities to be dispensed by Vice- Chancellors and their advisors, it is filtered through a well honed process of peer review and researcher accountability. All comparable countries use some means of contestability to determine research funding. To ensure top quality research at international standards competition between researchers seems essential.
In July last year Professor David Penington released his review of the organisational structure of the Australian Research Council. In it he makes clear the importance of a national, independent system to fund research. In his report he refers to an earlier review of the Large Grants Scheme of the ARC which showed that 61 per cent of research funded through the scheme was at the leading edge of international research and a further 24 per cent was shown to be of high quality and likely to influence the field.
This level of performance must be maintained and there is considerable doubt if this will be possible when research monies are distributed directly to universities to be allocated by internal mechanism, which must take into account collegiality and other possibly less objective mechanisms for determining quality. Certainly it could be much more difficult for new researchers or new programs to be supported.
Already a number of mechanisms have been attempted in an effort to distribute funds made directly to universities whilst maintaining a competitive approach to quality assurance.
In his interim report, Professor Penington says:
'There is good evidence that introduction of the number of publications as an indicator within the formula for distribution of both the Research Quantum and Research Infrastructure grants, has been followed by a significant increase in the number of publications. This has occurred without any indication of their value as shown by a parallel rise in overall frequency of citation of the publications by other research workers. Indeed, the change has occurred concurrently with an overall decline in frequency of international citation of Australian higher education research … Such a trend is damaging to the standing of Australian research in the international community.' (Penington, David: 1998 Review of the Organisational Structure of the Australian Research Council, p 10, forthcoming publication).
With this timely reminder of the problems associated with the recent attempts at directing research funds to universities on largely quantitative rather than qualitative grounds, we need to be well alerted to the present proposals. It is anticipated that a redrafted paper will be released more widely early in the year. All social scientists will need to examine it carefully and be aware of the possible long term dangers of diminishing the funding role of the Australian Research Council.
Fay Gale
1999
Last modified: 2 November 2009.