Academy of Social Sciences in Australia
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President's Report
Professor Sue Richardson
There have been two main developments since my last report. One is a successful AGM and Symposium held in November 2005. The other is the outcome of the Review of the Learned Academies. I report on each in turn.
The Annual Meeting
The annual meetings took their usual form: a Colloquium held on Sunday evening; a Symposium held all day Monday, followed by the Cunningham Lecture and Annual Dinner; and the panel meetings and AGM held on Tuesday morning. In addition, the newly 'traditional' welcome breakfast for new Fellows was held prior to the Panel meetings. Each of these events went extremely well, and if you have not attended the annual meetings for a while, I encourage you to come to the meetings for 2006 (5-7 November) and appreciate for yourself the interesting and stimulating range of activities that occur. One of the great advantages is the opportunity to meet informally with the many highly talented and active social scientists who comprise our Fellowship, including those in disciplines with whom you do not normally mingle. Our 21 newly elected Fellows were presented with their Testamurs at the Dinner and were welcomed again at the AGM. A considerable effort goes into making the new Fellows feel welcome and aware of how the Academy functions, and the feedback suggests that we are doing quite well in this.
Proceedings started with the Colloquium, an informal gathering of Fellows who assemble to discuss a topic of current interest. Given the quality of the people who attend, it is not surprising that it is always a lively and stimulating event. On this occasion, it was led by lawyers Hilary Charlesworth and Larissa Behrendt, who set out a strong case that Australia should adopt a bill of rights.
The Symposium - 'Ideas and Influence' - was extremely successful. Its theme was the contribution of the social sciences to public policy, and thus was of interest to a wide range of Fellows. It was based on a project that was jointly sponsored by the Academy and the Monash Institute for the Study of Global Movements. The book arising from the project was available at the Symposium, which gave people an opportunity to read further about those ideas from the Symposium that had whetted the appetite. All the project authors contributed to the Symposium, albeit with a strictly rationed allocation of time. The format of having many well-thought-out sets of ideas presented briefly, then a discussion panel, worked well. It was also pleasing to see a number of people at the Symposium who were not Fellows, especially those from the public sector.
Indeed, we invited government departments that enrolled one or two of their senior people to also bring some junior staff, with our compliments. The organisers of the Symposium (and editors of the book on which it was based) were Peter Saunders and Jim Walters and they did a fine job indeed. I would like also to thank John Niewenhuysen and the Monash Institute for the ideas and resources that they contributed to the book on which the Symposium was based.
The Cunningham Lecture was given by Fellow Paul Kelly, Editor-at-Large of The Australian newspaper. In his discussion of 'Re-thinking Australian Governance', he treated his audience to an insightful account of how the Howard government governs. He combined the journalist's inside and detailed knowledge of what is actually going on with the intellectual's ability to provide structure and interpretation. It was a wonderful treat, and you can read the lecture in the Academy's recent publication (Occasional Paper 4/2005)
At the Dinner, 21 new Fellows were introduced, with a short account of their academic contribution. This important ceremony aside, the Dinner is a valued occasion for colleagues to meet and talk at leisure.
The AGM saw a modest turnover of the membership of committees and Panel Chairs. Peter Saunders retired from his role as Chair of the Workshop Committee (and thereby as a member of the Executive). Peter has done a wonderful job in both roles and under his leadership the Workshop Program has become one of our most important ways of supporting multi-disciplinary and often risk-taking work. It is a bottom up process where the initiative comes from individual Fellows. It is also one of our important forms of outreach, since many participants are not Fellows and increasingly they include policy makers and others outside of academic life.
The work of the Secretariat is indispensable to the success of the annual Meetings. Their high-level professionalism and skill was evident in the fact that no-one noticed the machinery of support that lay behind everything that happened. I thank the Secretariat, led most capably by our Executive Director, John Beaton, for the many hours and much care and thought that went into the efficient running of this complex event.
The Review
In my last report I described the process of the Review and invited Fellows to read our main submission. This documents an impressive record of increased activity in recent years, partly in response to the additional resources provided under the Higher Education Innovation Program (HEIP).
The report of the three reviewers (Bruce Alpert, previous president of the American Academy of Science), John Hay, Vice-Chancellor of Queensland University, and John Ralph, distinguished businessman, was made available to the Academies in January this year. It had many supportive things to say about the Academies and recommended to the Government that the Grant-in-aid (currently $315,000 pa) be approximately doubled. In particular, it accepted the argument put by the Academies that each contains a wealth of ability among its Fellowship, willing to put in voluntary time to promote the public good. But the Academies can only marshal and focus this ability if they have adequately resourced secretariats.
The Review has made a number of recommendations, and the Minister for Education, Science and Training (then Dr Nelson) asked our Academy to respond to these by the end of January. The recommendations included:
- Each Academy review its disciplinary groupings at regular intervals to ensure that relevant new fields are included and are represented appropriately in the Fellowship.
- All of the Academies focus on addressing gender imbalances in the Fellowships.
- A special emphasis be placed by all Academies on developing, networking, and encouraging the next generation of leaders in their disciplines.
- The Academies raise the media profile of their work, policies, and outcomes.
- To address broad policy issues of national significance that require diverse expertise and/or multiple academies, the interactions within and among Academies be enhanced.
- Educational and outreach initiatives be developed further, with full exploitation of emerging advances in communications technologies.
- While broad international initiatives should be enhanced, a special emphasis might be placed on developing leadership roles for one or more of the Australian Academies in the convening of selected Asian neighbours.
- Each Academy be required, as a condition of grant-in-aid funding, to periodically review their corporate governance policies and practices, taking a hard look at the performance of its executive, committee and other structures.
- Each Academy ensure that appropriate strategic planning and policy processes are in place.
We have provided the Minister with a brief response to each of these recommendations. A more comprehensive set of responses, together with actions to implement them, will be developed by the Executive Committee at its meeting in early April. I would very much welcome any thoughts on how to respond to the recommendations that Fellows would like to offer. Your contributions will be taken most seriously in the discussions by the Executive.
The recommended increase in the Grant-in Aid of each of the Academies, and of the National Academies Forum, will be considered by DEST as part of the 2006-07 Commonwealth Budget process. Any increase will not be felt before 2007.
Other matters
Many readers will be aware that late last year the Minister of Education (Dr Nelson) was reported to have vetoed a number of Social Sciences and Humanities grant applications that had been recommended for funding by the ARC. This action understandably caused high levels of concern and dismay among many people, including our Fellows. After considerable thought and correspondence on the matter, I concluded that the best course of action for our Academy was to write privately to the Minister, expressing our concern and the reasons why we felt such action to be very illadvised. I also felt it would be more compelling if such a letter came from the National Academies Forum, which represents all of the four Learned Academies, and not just from ASSA. I am pleased to say that the President of NAF, Dr John Zillman (President of the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering) agreed and wrote a letter in these terms to Minister Nelson.
The Indigenous Summer School for post-graduate students and their supervisors was held at Ormond College, University of Melbourne, in February. The program and management of the Summer School was greatly assisted by the co-operation with Professor Ian Anderson and his Centre for Health and Society at the University of Melbourne. I was fortunate to be able to join the participants at dinner during the week of the Summer School and to hear first hand their very positive comments about the value of the program. Leon Mann, who with Marcia Langton initiated this important activity of the Academy, has stood down from his hands-on role. We are grateful to Ruth Fincher for stepping into his shoes.
Leon Mann and John Beaton represented the Academy at the conference of the Association of Asian Social Science Research Councils (AASSREC), held in New Delhi in November (see Report under Academy News). Regrettably, at the last minute I had to withdraw from our delegation and Leon most ably presented our Country paper on my behalf. By all accounts it was a highly successful conference and provided an excellent opportunity for us to nourish our relationships with sister Academies in the region. It was also the occasion for us to take over formal responsibility for the Secretariat of AASSREC, which we have now done.
The Symposium topic for 2006 has now been settled. We were in the happy position of having three serious proposals. We invited the opinion of Fellows as to which of the three would most appeal to them. I am pleased to say that we had over 90 responses.
The topic that has been selected is Internal Migration. Hundreds of thousands of Australians move location in any one year. This major migration is generating radical change in Australia's pattern of human settlement; understanding its dynamics and origins is crucial for sound social, economic and environmental planning. A multidiscipline examination of the many consequences of large scale internal migration is being conducted at present with funding from the ARC Learned Academies program.
The project is led by Fellows Graeme Hugo and Peter McDonald together with Martin Bell. It will document contemporary trends, place them in historical and international context, apply and enhance cutting edge analytical methods, and explore implications for policy. It is sure to provide rich material for an excellent Symposium with broad appeal.
In future, the Symposium topic will be chosen about 18 months in advance, in order to provide proper time for the Symposium Committee, the organisers and the Secretariat to do the necessary work without undue pressure. We will therefore be seeking ideas for the 2007 Symposium soon.
Last modified: 2 November 2009.