Mid-year budget slashes $499m from research support

By Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation

Almost half a billion dollars will be cut over four years from a program that helps pay overhead costs for Australia's researchers, according to a national mini-budget released today.

The Federal Government's Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) for the 2012-13 financial year, released in Canberra today, said that “longer"‘term growth in some research funding to universities will be temporarily slowed to ensure that research funding to universities remains sustainable.”

The current round Australian Research Council linkage grants has not yet opened due to a government-imposed freeze, a move condemned by universities as short-term thinking.

The MYEFO said the government would be “slowing the rate of funding increases for Sustainable Research Excellence by maintaining funding at the 2012 level for the 2013 calendar year, then increasing funding over the three years to a maximum amount of $300 million in 2016. This will decrease payments by $79 million in 2012"‘13 ($499 million over four years). Funding will then be indexed annually from 2017 by the Higher Education Indexation Factor.”

The Sustainable Research Excellence program helps pay for costs associated with doing research, such as water, electricity, property costs and other infrastructure.

Treasurer Wayne Swan said in a statement that “the decisions taken in this MYEFO were difficult but critical at a time of falling revenues and ongoing global headwinds.” He said on Twitter earlier today that the budget surplus would be around $1 billion (down from original forecast of $1.5 billion).

The Chair of the Group of Eight universities and Vice-Chancellor, The University of New South Wales, Professor Fred Hilmer, said the cuts were disappointing.

“Clearly, we are bitterly disappointed that the brunt of the savings are going to come from research,” he said.

“This is the area that has had tremendous improvement in the last few years and is absolutely critical for the standing of our universities both as destinations for international students and peers for other great institutions in the world with whom we seek to do research.

Universities Australia has warned that a funding freeze could send our brightest researchers overseas but Tertiary Education Minister Chris Evans told Senate Estimates hearings this month that was a “ridiculous proposition”.

Professor Daine Alcorn, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research and Innovation at RMIT, said the cuts were “devastating”.

“This is what provides support for the overheads – the electricity, the water, the space you live on – for all of these programs. Cutting $499 million over the next four years is really taking back a promise the government gave to actually fund this kind of research in an appropriate way. It will have a devastating effect.”

Separately, the government announced $652 million in National Health and Medical Research Council grants on Friday.