Statement from president Anthony White on behalf of the AAANZ:
The Art Association of Australia and New Zealand (AAANZ) condemns in the strongest terms the actions of the former Minister of Education of Training, Simon Birmingham, who in 2017 arbitrarily reversed several grant awarding decisions made by the Australian Research Council (ARC).
As has been recently reported in Senate Estimates and in the media, the then Minister intervened in the grant awarding process by going against the expertise and decision-making of the ARC and disallowed a number of grants in the humanities, several of which were in the field of art history. This decision to disregard the expert advice of the ARC demonstrates shows that the current government has no respect for the humanities or the independent advice of the scholars and professionals who support the activities of the ARC, the nation’s most significant funder of humanities research.
The AAANZ completely rejects the decision taken by the Minister in 2017, and in unison with the Australian Academy of Humanities, the National Tertiary Education Union, and the Australian Historical Association, calls for the independence and respect for expertise of the ARC to be restored. The AAANZ demands that the Australian government urgently take the following steps:
1. The former Minister should immediately explain the rationale for the reversal of the funding decisions made in 2017 by the ARC;
2. Funds that were not awarded to the affected researchers should now be made available to them;
3. A new protocol, set in place by legislation, should specify that any future minister reversing a funding decision of the ARC should make that fact public at the time the decision is made and state the reasons for it.
The AAANZ has written to the local Member of Parliament for the electorate where the Association is based, Adam Bandt, for assistance in prosecuting this agenda. Individual members and subscribers are also encouraged to direct their messages directly to the current Minister for Education and Training Dan Tehan by using the online tool provided by the National Tertiary Education Union which can be found here.
http://www.nteu.org.au/policy/
research/former_minister_ vetoed_research_grants Anthony White
President, AAANZ