THE establishment of 70 new research institutes in the past decade with total
budget commitments of about A$5.5 billion has been an impressive
achievement. But it is now time to ring some changes, says the father of
Australia’s Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) Programme, Ralph Slatyer.
Speaking in Brisbane at the recent CRC Association conference Slatyer, a
former chief scientist, called for greater flexibility in funding and a more
adventurous approach towards selecting the areas future research centres should
cover.
The CRC programme was the big Australian science policy success of the 1990s.
And the review of progress at the recent…
