Australian Research Council Amendment (Review Response) Bill 2023

The majority voted in favour of a motion that "item 3 of schedule 3 stand as printed", which means that item will remain unchanged. This motion was put after NSW Senator Mehreen Faruqi (Greens) moved that the item should be opposed.

Why did Senator Faruqi oppose this item?

Senator Faruqi explained that, together with another amendment, opposing this item would:

remove the minister's power to specify designated research programs in regulations under which funding for individual research projects is decided solely by the minister and not by the ARC board. While these regulations would be disallowable, significant concerns have been raised by universities, university peak bodies and researchers that this risks the minister taking sole decision-making power over a very wide range of funding decisions on individual grants.

Text of item 3 of schedule 3?

At the end of section 4

Add:

(2) The Minister may, by legislative instrument, specify a research program for the purposes of paragraph (d) of the definition of designated research program in subsection (1).