Millions of dollars of research infrastructure funding and 1700 research jobs at risk of cuts may be safe for now but, without a long-term commitment, Australia will struggle to retain scientists and attract world-class researchers to the sector.
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Education Minister Christopher Pyne's decision to split the future funding of the $150 million National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) from the government's university deregulation bill was welcomed by Nobel laureate Professor Brian Schmidt and ANU vice-chancellor Ian Young.
But both believe the government needs to engage with all sides of politics to reform the university sector and hope the one-year of NCRIS funding will bridge the scheme until a review of research infrastructure funding being conducted by chief scientist Ian Chubb and Phillip Clarke will establish a new system.
Professor Schmidt said the threat to NCRIS – a body which funds 27 research facilities rather than individual projects - had the sector in "panic mode".
"Most of the damage has been avoided but we do have an issue coming up in a year from now when this whole cycle will repeat, so we need to bridge to this Phillip Clarke review which will look at infrastructure funding long term."
Speaking after the 30-year anniversary celebrations of Questacon's travelling outreach show the Science Circus, Mrs Andrews said she hoped researchers and scientists felt more confident about their futures after the "good outcome" for NCRIS funding.
But she said the way research funding was organised in Australia had to be reformed with scientists telling her they had to spend too long writing grant proposals many of which had a low success rate.
"Why are we having our top research scientists spending their time writing grant applications when they should be out there doing research?" she said.
But Professor Young said scientists were their "own worst enemies" feeling compelled to go into a great level of detail.
"The real problem is the [research grant] success rate is so low… the level of funding for research isn't sufficient in this country," he said.
Professor Schmidt said both sides of politics while in government have attempted to offset all research funding within the one portfolio of education, when the research cut across many different portfolios.
"To just slug it out of the universities, which is what I fear is going to happen, is not doing the problem justice and is causing even more pain to a university system under incredible duress due to the uncertainty to these higher education reforms," he said.
Professor Young said the ANU would have lost $15 million if the NCRIS funding had not been secured.
"If you're trying to attract world-class people to come and work in those environments they want more than a year of certainty about their future," he said.
Beyond the deregulation of fees, Professor Young said broader discussion was needed about how to sustain major research universities.
Both Professor Schmidt and Professor Young believe the "super profits tax" style suggestion from HECS' architect Bruce Chapman - allowing universities to set their own fees but face a levy if they raise fees over a set amount - could be a way forward for the reforms, but only if all sides of politics were engaged.
