Parliament House,
Canberra, ACT
[check against delivery]
The seed of this workshop was sown long before May this year, when I raised the idea of appointing a research ombudsman to deal with academic disputes that couldn’t be resolved internally.
This is an issue I’ve been interested in for years.
I’ve highlighted several cases where dispute resolution procedures didn’t appear to produce satisfactory results – including by tabling Sir Gerard Brennan’s report on the case of Professor Bruce Hall in the Senate in 2004.
I followed the excruciatingly slow development of the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research – which many in the sector had resigned themselves to living with as a second-best solution even before it was completed.
And I canvassed these issues with vice-chancellors, research administrators and the National Tertiary Education Union soon after becoming minister.
My concern is that while researchers and universities can sort out their differences 90 or 95 per cent of the time, there is no effective mechanism for handling the 5 or 10 per cent of cases that prove intractable.
Once the internal dispute resolution process has been exhausted, the next stop tends to be the courts.
This is far from ideal.
The right of appeal
We need to give scholars an avenue of appeal when they’ve come to the end of the line with their university – without involving them in costly, acrimonious and potentially scandalous legal action.
This could be a research ombudsman, a tribunal, or an office of research integrity.
The right of appeal should be extended both to those who raise allegations of research misconduct and those against whom the allegations are made.
The code
There are obviously serious questions about the adequacy of the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research.
I know there are people in this room who would like to see us tear it up and start again.
There are others who wouldn’t want to go that far, but who still have concerns about specific disputes.
I don’t want to get bogged down in particular cases, but we should all be gravely concerned when independent judges start telling us researchers accused of misconduct have been denied natural justice.
It is disappointing that a code drawn up after years of consultation still has flaws.
It doesn’t help that individual universities appear to have been inconsistent in the way they’ve applied the code’s research misconduct provisions.
To be fair, some institutions have pre-existing legal and industrial relations obligations at odds with the code.
If that’s the problem, we need to work through it.
Other institutions simply have their own ideas about what compliance means.
This undermines public and professional confidence in what we are doing.
The code may only be a year old, but in the eyes of many, there have been problems with it since day one.
This is unfinished business, and it’s time we attended to it.
Principles
We need to be clear about the principles that should guide the design of any effective process for managing questions of research ethics.
In my view, the process must be consistent with the principles of natural justice and procedural fairness.
It must protect the rights of individuals:
• including the right to confidentiality while allegations remain untested
• and including the rights of whistleblowers acting in good faith.
My preference is to have disputes handled internally.
I’m a great defender of institutional autonomy, and a great believer that people should be given the chance to fix their own problems wherever possible.
Only when internal processes break down should we be looking at an external review mechanism – preferably with real scholarly and legal authority.
Having said that, it would be good if we could keep the lawyers out of it, except as an absolute last resort.
We also need to think about the constitutional, administrative and cost implications of any model we might choose, and also how non-university staff involved in university research would be covered.
There are serious questions to be considered here, including questions about the legal powers of the National Health and Medical
Research Council and the Australian Research Council.
We should not be daunted by this.
The important thing is to focus on our overarching objectives.
In my view, they should be:
• giving practical effect to the ethical standards we proclaim
• defending academic freedom
• and promoting research excellence.
Academic rights and freedoms
Most of you will be aware that my first actions as minister were aimed at safeguarding academic freedom and restoring the independence of our research institutions.
I appointed a new expert group representing a cross-section of the research community to advise the ARC on strategy and policy.
I flagged the introduction of charters for our public research agencies that will guarantee their right to pursue lines of inquiry, publish results and participate in public debate without political interference.
And I restored transparency to the ARC’s grant allocation processes so that there would be no repetition of Dr Brendan Nelson’s clandestine interventions in 2004 and 2005.
Freedom produces the best research, and it is essential that our universities provide the kind of environment in which outstanding research can happen.
That includes ensuring that when disputes arise, they’re handled properly.
Excellence
And then there is research excellence.
This is something all universities should be striving for.
Second-rate research is a luxury Australia can’t afford – we just don’t have that kind of money to throw around.
If we want to be competitive in the worldwide market for goods, services and ideas, we must be doing world-class research.
That’s why our approach to allegations of misconduct is so important.
We must be able to vouch for the integrity of Australian research and research findings.
Our international reputation depends on it.
The future
Much has happened since I wrote to the ARC, the NHMRC, Universities Australia, and the NTEU in May.
My department has been consulting with these bodies and many others.
It has carried out a desktop analysis of how universities currently manage research misconduct.
It has examined international approaches to dispute resolution.
And, of course, it has organised this workshop.
It is essential that we work together on this.
I’m pretty sure everyone here would agree that universities need to apply the code consistently and effectively.
Most of us would probably also agree that parts of the code may need to be modified.
There will also be many things we disagree about, and this is an opportunity to thrash them out.
On the face of it, this is a workshop about practical matters – how we deal with allegations of research misconduct and scientific fraud.
But it is also about much more than that.
It is about protecting the Australian brand.
It’s about repaying the trust the community places in our researchers.
It’s about upholding the honour of the profession.
It’s about doing what is just and right.
Having worked with the higher education sector for some time now, I know I can count on you for that.