Grant delays feared as ARC ramps up ‘due diligence’

Australia’s effort to take politics out of research grants has stymied the distribution of funding, as administrators grapple with new national security obligations.

A Senate estimates committee has heard that processing timeframes for key Australian Research Council (ARC) funding schemes have increased by up to six months following a 2024 legislative change to protect grants from ministerial veto.

The amendment to the ARC Act transferred approval of most grants to a new board, while maintaining the education minister’s power to quash funding of projects deemed a risk to Australia’s national security, defence or international relations.

While the minister has not yet exercised that power, grant applications in fields of potential security concern require extra processing time, as the ARC seeks advice from border protection and foreign affairs agencies.

Other applications are processed within the council’s advertised timeframes – an approach that has largely resolved the delays and uncertainties that plagued researchers several years ago.

However, the ARC recently increased the “indicative announcement date windows” for grants from around two weeks to three months. Processing timeframes for some schemes have also been increased by between four and six months.

“These updates reflect enhancements to the ARC due diligence and research security processes,” the council explained in a “network message” in January.

Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi told the committee that processing of some multi-year grants would now take half as long as their duration. “Researchers have told me that these timescales are completely unworkable for cutting edge research and for planning.”

ARC chair Perter Shergold said the legislative amendment had put the council “at the final forefront” of shielding research from foreign interference. “The requirements we now have to go through…are more extensive and time-consuming than we had imagined,” he told the committee.

“It is unfortunate, but I think inevitable, that therefore the processes of making grant decisions will take longer. My hope is that we will be able to reduce that timetable again.”

A research funding transparency campaigner, who communicates under the social media handle “ARC Tracker”, said knowing when to expect grant outcomes had been “one of the big wins” of the past few years. “This three-month window…is basically useless. It’s completely undermined the ability for researchers to plan their lives around the big changes that come when they get one of these grants.

“People are just tearing their hair out. You’ve got to tell your industry partner that [you] won’t know the outcome for about a year [or] even when it’s going to come. What do you think the industry partner is going to say?”

Shergold said the ARC planned to continue the practice of “not holding up” research applications that clearly posed no security concerns. “It is a small minority of cases that present a risk,” he said, while declining to quantify how many. “It’s definitely less than 10 per cent but we’re unable to comment,” said deputy ARC CEO Anthony Murphett.

The committee also heard that the ARC had reviewed its new two-step system for processing grants, after applicants who had been rejected at the first stage complained of “very large discrepancy” in the grades awarded by different members of the “college of experts” who judge grant bids. The ARC was unable to say whether the results of the review would be released publicly.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com