Public interest to be better served in commercialisation of research

CAPA welcomes the thirty-first recommendation of the Senate Committee report, Universities in Crisis, that broad policy needs to be developed and implemented to ensure that research commercialisation activities favour the public interest, and observe appropriate due diligence and probity requirements.

"Universities are keen to engage in research commercialisation, but currently lack guidance from governments regarding the special requirements incumbent upon them as public institutions," said President John Byron today.

"In another example of the Howard Government's incapacity to manage the public education system, universities have been told to go out there and drum up their own trade without any assistance to help them avoid the many probity and public interest pitfalls awaiting them," he added.

"Dr Kemp could not have run this more woefully had he been deliberately setting up universities for a fall.

"While some ventures have been particularly unwise, resulting in embarrassment to the sector, it is a credit to most research developers that more commercial research ventures have not fallen foul of regulatory requirements, given this vacuum of proper regulatory direction," observed Mr Byron.

One possible reason for the Commonwealth's failure to observe its responsibilities in this matter derives from the Minister's abject failure to work constructively with the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, the forum comprised of all Commonwealth, State and Territory Ministers with portfolio responsibility for these areas.

"Dr Kemp has repeatedly indulged his propensity to act according to his volatile temper, rather than his Ministerial responsibility, and has failed to collaborate on this and many other important matters with his peers on MCEETYA," said Mr Byron.

"This is difficult stuff for universities," he mused. "Many of the problems and potential regulatory hazards they confront are completely new, and the people who must navigate these uncharted waters are quite inexpert in the fields of probity and due diligence regulations."

Mr Byron stressed that institutions are generally keen to conform to all that the public expects of them.

"Most universities want to do the right thing; they just need help before they get into strife, not a hard slap and a lot of damaging press after the fact," he said.

"To strip universities of their operating grants, and then to throw them to the wilds without the tools to aid them in conducting their business without serious transgression, is a serious abdication of government responsibility on the part of the Coalition," concluded Mr Byron.