Universities are outraged by a federal decision to veto Australian Research Council (ARC) funding. 

Six university research grants totalling $1.4 million, including two on climate issues and two on China, were vetoed for 2022 on Christmas Eve last year.

The Morrison government intervened because it believed the grants were a waste of money and not in the national interest.

When Senior Liberal Amanda Stoker represented Education Minister Stuart Robert at recent senate estimates hearings, she defended the intellectual intervention. 

“Lots of people have inserted the words ‘China’ and ‘climate change’ to try and attract funding because they are topics du jour. But that doesn’t mean they are projects created equal,” she said. 

She said the funds “can be more usefully spent providing medical services to children with diabetes or indeed research into much more practical applications”.

Labor senator Kim Carr said the projects were vetoed on the “minister’s whim”.

The Australian Academy of the Humanities says; “When the integrity of Australia’s system is compromised by perceived or actual political interference, there are real costs for the research sector and indeed for the nation”. 

“Arbitrary judgements should play no part in a fit-for-purpose system. We believe there is a strong national interest in constructive relations between the government of the day and the research sector.”

The funding for the six rejected projects included $449,000 to examine “how climate shaped Elizabethan theatre”, $436,069 for a project titled “New Possibilities: Student Climate Action and Democratic Renewal”, “Popular Narratives: China’s Stories Under Xi Jinping” and “National Forgetting and Local Remembering: Memory Politics in Modern China” (seeking funding of $106,000 and $130,444 respectively), as well as a $94,000 project on “cultural production of religion by science fiction and fantasy novels”, and a $165,000 project on “finding friendship in early English literature”.