Long live CRCs: veteran researchers adapt to survive

Forget the record $AUD478 million that the Federal Government has just pledged to pump into the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) program over the next seven years.

The real story is all about who is getting the new funds and what is happening to the senior citizens in the CRC scheme -- now nearly 14 years old -- which welds together the research strengths of the country's industrial, academic and government sectors.

Of the 30 successful new applicants for the seventh round of public funding since the idea was launched in 1990, 12 are brand new to the scene and are led by:

• $24.8 million for a new Bushfire CRC which will bring together experts to increase understanding of the best ways to prevent and fight bushfires.
• $26.7 million for a CRC for Sustainable Tourism to be developed from an existing CRC.
• $17.5 million for a new Australian Biosecurity CRC to develop new capabilities to respond to the threat of infectious diseases in the agricultural sector.

Another nine are basically additions to existing CRCs, including three which have received funding for a second term and six which have become the first CRCs to be funded for a third term.

The success rate of third-term CRC applicants stands at an astonishing 86 per cent, said CRC Association executive manager Dr Anne Campbell.

Considering they have had to engage in open combat for the funds against a host of newcomers, that percentage demonstrates how re-inventive the CRC old guard is.

Consider this: Of the 64 CRCs created since the program's first seven-year funding package was approved in 1990, only two have disappeared from the scene. And even they haven't so much disappeared as morphed into another form.

One was the CRC for Tissue Growth and Repair which has commercialised as the Adelaide company TGR Biosciences. The other was the CRC for International Food Packaging, which no longer exists but which has spawned a number of spin-off companies, Campbell said.

That third-term CRCs would eventually appear was not an expected development when the program was first conceived. If anything, its creators felt the program should guard against long-lived individual CRCs because they assumed longevity would equal ossification.

But the competition for new funding seemingly has guaranteed a freshness of thinking among existing CRCs which diminishes that danger.

The government funding only represents a fraction of the total resources committed to CRCs. Under the program's rules, each government dollar is leveraged by up to $AUD3.8 worth of industry.

Putting a precise dollar figure on the CRC program after seven rounds of funding (roughly one every two years) is a difficult exercise, Campbell said.

According to government figures, participants have committed "more than $7 billion in cash and kind." That includes $1.8 billion by government, $1.3 billion from universities and nearly $1 billion by CSIRO.

That the current government has decided the CRC program represents a good bet against the future is demonstrated by the recent trend in funding.

Against the long-term annual government average of $140 million for the program, this year the government will commit $148.6 million rising to $200 million next year.