![\"Liam](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/a55f4ee0b9c218ce5f284dc1bccff92e638b76db.png\")
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Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n Save this article for later<\/p>\n Add articles to your saved list and come back to them anytime.<\/p>\n Got it<\/p>\n AAA<\/p>\n Examine, a free weekly newsletter covering science with a sceptical, evidence-based eye, is sent every Tuesday. You\u2019re reading an excerpt \u2013 sign up to get the whole newsletter in your inbox<\/a>.<\/p>\n A long-running campaign to improve the nation\u2019s glacial scientific research bureaucracy has culminated in an extraordinary blowout to grant approval times, leaving scientists waiting more than a year for essential funding and despondent about the future of research in Australia.<\/p>\n Turning around taxpayer-funded grants within six months of scientists applying for them is considered international best practice. But in Australia, some key research grants \u2013 which pay the salaries of many scientists and fund their experiments \u2013 will now take up to 16 months to process, the federal government announced earlier this year.<\/p>\n The change could force researchers to apply for a new grant without knowing if their last application has been successful, a situation Professor Euan Ritchie, an ecologist at Deakin University, labelled \u201cquite frankly absurd\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThey will stymie research and learning, create further job insecurity and deter our best and brightest from pursuing research careers, and hold us back as a nation,\u201d Ritchie said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt makes a mockery of any political rhetoric stating that science and research are genuinely valued and supported in Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n Discovery grants are a key pillar of Australia\u2019s research ecosystem, allowing scientists to do fundamental \u201cblue-sky\u201d research over a three-year funding period.<\/p>\n The Australian Research Council took nine months to process the 2025 grants. For the 2026 grants, they are now proposing to take up to 16 months.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the worst timeframe I\u2019ve ever seen. And this is a projected timeframe. It doesn\u2019t work. You can\u2019t do it on that timescale,\u201d said a researcher who tracks the Australian Research Council\u2019s grant timetables on social media<\/a> and was granted anonymity to speak frankly.<\/p>\n Related Article \u201cColleagues just shake their heads and say it\u2019s a complete joke. It\u2019s unworkable. They don\u2019t know how they can possibly plan their research.\u201d<\/p>\n The ARC has long been a bugbear for Australian researchers; Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt labelled it \u201cnot fit for purpose<\/a>\u201d in 2022.<\/p>\n But after a pressure campaign led Education Minister Jason Clare to drop a controversial requirement<\/a> that he personally sign off on all new grants in 2023, researchers thought they had made a breakthrough.<\/p>\n It was hoped that would cut months off the timeline for grant approvals. Instead, that progress appears to have been scuppered by new enhanced security requirements.<\/p>\n Law changes in 2024 required the ARC to screen grants for potential national security issues<\/a> such as co-ordinating with Chinese or Russian researchers on weapons research.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is, in fact, a very complex and detailed issue. And it is unfortunate but, I think, inevitable that therefore the processes of making grant decisions will take longer,\u201d ARC chair Professor Peter Shergold told Senate estimates last month.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is clear to us that the process is more time-consuming than was imagined.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, separate changes introduced by parliament to the Defence Trade Controls Act in 2024 have left researchers with \u201ca book 300 pages long with types of research that might have security implications,\u201d said Kylie Walker, chief executive of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an understandable and reasonable thing to want to put that lens over research assessments,\u201d she said. But if the government is asking the ARC to do more, it needs more resources, she said.<\/p>\n Editor’s pick Instead, the ARC has been shedding staff via voluntary redundancies, dropping from 147 employees in 2019-20, to 131.<\/p>\n \u201cI have immense sympathy for the ARC. The system is underresourced,\u201d said Professor Aidan Sims, president of the Australian Mathematical Society. \u201cBut there is no other research funding system in the world that is anything like as slow at the outcomes of grants as this.\u201d<\/p>\n A spokesman for the ARC said it \u201crecognises the importance of timely outcomes for the sector and is continuing to look for opportunities to expedite research security processes\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWherever possible, outcomes will be announced early within published timeframes.\u201d<\/p>\n NHMRC takes action on research integrity<\/p>\n While the ARC is working out how to counter foreign adversaries, its health-sciences counterpart is taking action against domestic risks.<\/p>\n The National Health and Medical Research Council released a joint statement with the ARC on Monday pledging to bolster the fight against dodgy scientific research.<\/p>\n This masthead has reported extensively on research integrity problems across the sector, including the case of Professor Mark Smyth, who won tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer research funding before he was eventually accused of fraud<\/a>. Smyth has never publicly commented on the allegations.<\/p>\n The councils pledged to work together on developing a national database of research integrity issues; the lack of good data on the scale of the problem has long held back serious government action.<\/p>\n The two bodies will also work with universities to encourage them to use independent investigators, rather than keeping investigations in-house \u2013 a major pain-point for research misconduct campaigners, who allege internal investigations allow universities to sweep problems under the rug.<\/p>\n \u201cThere will always, in any system, be people who do the wrong thing. It would be naive to think there is nothing going on,\u201d said ARC chief executive Professor Steve Wesselingh. \u201cWe don\u2019t need to hide that from the public.\u201d<\/p>\n The Examine newsletter explains and analyses science with a rigorous focus on the evidence. Sign up to get it each week<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n![\"Scientist](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/700dde4210e92569d715ecd6cef4ee4dc7e2078d.jpeg\")
Scientist Euan Ritchie is using crowdfunding for a research project to set up cameras to detect wildlife in a Papua New Guinea mountain range.James Boddington<\/p>\n![\"Naum](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/af45d91e3f5637ff2eaa477aed0ecbd58a6ed173.jpeg\")
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<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Liam](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/a55f4ee0b9c218ce5f284dc1bccff92e638b76db.png\")
Liam Mannix<\/a> is The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald’s national science reporter.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-515695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}