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From the Canberra Times, Friday 29 January 1993, p. 3.

PROMISED RESEARCH CENTRE HAS ITS $13m FUNDING
SCATTERED AROUND AUSTRALIA

By Veronica Burgess, Publlc Sector Reporter

When is a Cooperative Research Centre not a Cooperative
Research Centre?

When the main parties can't produce a single research
proposal in time, and so its $13 million funding is spit
into four and tacked on to existing Cooperative Research
Centres in various parts of Australia, you might think.

The $13 million Research Data Netvork Cooperative Research
Centre, announced in December, was set up with those
administrative arrangements but it was still called a
"cooperative research centre" by the Department of the Prime
Minister and Cabinet.

Former Chief Scientist and Chairman of the Cooperative
Research Centre Committee, Professor Ralph Slatyer,
suggested the arrangements in October, describing it as a
"novel, disaggregated" centre with three
"nodes" in four pre-existing CRCs.

In the letter, written to the Vice-Chancellor of the
University of Sydney, Professor Don McNicol, on October 20,
Professor Slatyer said he was seriously concerned "that no
coherent and viable proposal existed at this stage" and
suggested the new arrangements as a way of combating this
and other problems, induding overlap of research with
existing CRCs.

The "centre", which was announced in December by the Prime
Minister, Paul Keating, and the Minister for Science and
Technology, Ross Free, was given a specul allocation in the
last Budget after research data networking had been picked
out as an area of top priority by the Prime Minister's
Science Council and the Australian Science and Technology
Council.

The planned centre was fraught with controversy and hot
competition, with a bitter battle going on about the extent
of Telecom's involvement at the start, and later complaints
from tbe Australian Vice-Chancellor's Committee about tbe
amount of money it had been allocated for AARNET, the
Australian Academic Research Network, which is one part of
the centre's activities.

Tbe money is split, with $6.6 million to be spent on four
research areas in separate centres; $3.4 milion to tbe AVCC
and $3 million for access to Telecom's long-awaited
broadband network.

The Assistant Secretary in charge of the Cooperative
Research Centres branch in the Department of Prime Minister
and Cabinet, Dr Andreas Dubs, said yesterday there was
nothing irregular or untoward about the arrangements for tbe
RDN-CRC.

He conceded there had been "novelty" in the process but said
the "outcome" was very similar to other centres. There would
be a management committee set up, for example to look at
access to the Telecom broadband facility, and the research
as in tbe three "nodes" were fully prepared to talk and
collaborate.

He denied tbe arrangements had been made in unseemly haste
to get money through because of budgetary pressures, saying
the process had been allowed for in the guidelines and
approved by the Minister for Science and Technology, Ross
Free.

It had become obvious it might be easier for the parties to
put up different proposals, or "building blocks" to the CRC
panel, which had considered 10 or 11 proposals and had by no
means funded all. Appropnate "building blocks" had been cut
to size by the advisory group and put into one CRC. The
committee was entitled to call for separate applications
and, in a sense, each "node" had to fulfil requirements more
rigorously because it had to contain all tbe components of a
full CRC.

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David McMullen  dmcm@coombs.anu.edu.au