sydney

After a long battle, the future of Australia's Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs) seems to have been secured. The latest review of the scheme has led to the Coalition government committing annual funding at the reduced level of last year — A$138 million (US$104 million) — and approving a round of applications for new centres, in competition with the 35 existing ones which are eligible for renewal.

The CRC scheme is widely seen as a successful strategy linking government, university and industry researchers on tightly focused tasks, mostly with medium-term, commercial goals. Successful centres have previously had to raise substantial funding from partner organizations to supplement a government grant of about A$2 million a year for seven years, with the possibility of a second seven-year term.

But the scheme, established by the previous Labor government, had recently appeared vulnerable under the conservative Coalition, with cuts in last year's budget and a drastic call from an industry review for a 70 per cent cut in government support (see Nature 387, 222 1997 & Nature 388, 507; 1997).

The decision, announced last week by the science minister, John Moore, was greeted with relief by the heads of the 67 CRCs, who had mounted a sustained lobby to defend the scheme. But the government has not yet released details of changes recommended in the latest review, ‘guided’ by the chief scientist, John Stocker, and former banking chief Don Mercer. This is now a focus of some lingering concerns.

Paul Wellings, the official in charge of science and technology in Moore's department, says there will be more emphasis on the commercialization of research. “The CRCs [need] very good business plans and a clear sense of what they are going to deliver,” he says.