2022-2023 Pre-Budget Submission

Download: 2022-2023 Pre-Budget Submission

Overview:

Investments in research and the higher education sector have been declining over several years, and the consequences will be irreparable if left unaddressed. Furthermore, we are concerned Australia’s future innovators will be ill-prepared to contribute competitively in the post-covid environment.

We anticipate innovators of the future will be current and prospective postgraduate students. Thus, for the purpose of this submission, we identified the critical areas of a crisis affecting this demographic and concluded with the following recommendations:

1. Increase government investment expenditure into R&D by a sum of 4 billion AUD annually to match the commitment of other nations.
   1. The additional funds should be divided between the ARC, NHMRC, CSIRO and CRC.
   2. National priorities and industry-driven research should be channelled through the CSIRO and CRC initiatives.
   3. Fundamental (‘Blue Sky’) research should be funded at the recommendation of the ARC and not fall under the scrutiny of industry representatives.
2. Income support payments must be extended to all full-time domestic postgraduate students
3. The minimum stipend rate of the Research Training Program (RTP) must increase by $150-$250 per week to remain consistent with historical precedence.
4. Extend the Medicare subsidised 20 psychologist session cap into 2023.
5. The government investigate options for price regulation of postgraduate coursework degrees.