A very good summary of a big problem that needs action now!
A follow-up with the solutions is needed as quickly as possible.

You have highlighted what is going wrong with Australian Science. I have seen first hand what happens when research becomes a series of short-term low cost projects - our best scientists are going overseas and the new recruits are quickly disillusioned and change careers. Research laboratories are filled with overseas students who are eager to learn but find there is no one left to teach them. With only twelve months to work with there is no room for innovation or discovery or failed experiments - better to play on the safe side and only research the easy predictable stuff. At least then you stand a chance of getting a job next year.

Watching the slow death of our universities is hard to do. Particularly from the inside.

None of this is particularly new, the death throes /are/ getting more obvious now.

How or why accountants and their fairyland colleagues the 'economists' are allowed to run things still terrifies and confuses me. Accountants are very good at what they're trained to do. How that makes them qualified, or /more/ qualified, to do something else entirely is a mystery.

It doesn't help that whenever things go wrong, accountants are the first people called in. Followed by the lawyers. Why risk managers are brought in post-factum still elludes me.

Perhaps it's just me expressing sour grapes (though I /am/ a qualified lawyer) but why is budget more important in planning and so forth than actually *doing* anything that might actually achieve the objectives?

What a sad little article.

The author seems to think there is some correlation of action between this government and that of Stalin’s USSR.

Pretending a comparison between contemporary Australian socio-political institutions and Stalinist Russian socio-political institutions exists is to slander those Australian Institutions.

I guess if you have no basis for a statement and are starved of reason then the only recourse for those of such ineptitude is to slander those with capability.

Here we have this troll, for that is all he could possibly be, even with the postscript

“While this will hopefully never happen to such a degree here, it can be fairly contended that large realms of Australian science are already starving, either fiscally or intellectually, and that this will cost the nation in terms of its future social progress, economic prosperity and environmental sustainability.”

having written what is, at best, a whining complaint letter about being held accountable for his activity.

We all have a duty to account.
No one is employed, by government or commerce. for a free-ride and that is what the author is, intrinsically asking for.

If this fellow wants someone to indulge his whims, regardless of the competitive expectations of all and any “funder”, then he should have organised being born to rich parents.

Even creative artists are expected to produce something by their philanthropic benefactors. A troll in a lab coat can anticipate no less an expectation for “output” (= accountability for what was defrayed to indulge them).

One of the difficulties of being a bean counter is, I see the world the way it is. The problem the author faces is, he only sees what he wants to see and if he had “power”, ironically, his abuse of it might possibly be as bestial and ruthless as that exercised by T.D. Lysenko.

Col Rouge - One problem with 'bean counters' in Australia is that most have gone straight from school into a business studies course. Few have discovered the wonderful world of science or the arts and what could be achieved given the resources. The finance company my husband started out with (another bean counter so I have nothing against them personally ;))insisted that its graduates had their degree in some other subject - it gives a more well rounded thinking employee with a better understanding of 'how the world works'. Maybe we should be encouraging this approach in Australian companies.

Economics is important and maybe should be the overriding factor in decision making but it is by no means everything. Also accountants and economists generally have a problem with any project that takes ten years or more to show rewards.

There is a progression in this which is a little alarming, and that is the utter conviction that anything worthwhile can be measured in dollar terms. While money has its uses, and can be usefully employed as a baseline for many business comparisons, it falls short of being the ideal that many would like it to be.

Health is a classic example. If everything within the health system is measured in dollars, the health providers (over a period of time, of course) will gravitate to the most profitable activities.

Which in all probability is cosmetic surgery on rich patients.

Is this a particularly desirable outcome? No. Is it the natural destination of a purely money-measured activity? Yes.

So in order to protect ourselves from this outcome (I am hypothesising here) we might take out insurance policies that guarantee the health service the same amount of dollars for attending a car accident as for conducting liposuction. At least we then have the "dollar measurement" bit covered.

Except, of course, that insurance companies are profit-driven, too. The premiums they charge will be actuarially determined, so that (inevitably) the cost will eventually be borne by those who most need the services. Getting old will suddenly become a very, very expensive business.

Scientific research is in the same boat. Companies will allocate R&D dollars only to those areas that will create a return on their investment within a realistic horizon - which, unfortunately becomes shorter every year. The sort of research that crosses thought boundaries will disappear completely, in a society that measures every form of action in dollar terms.

The speed and direction of this particular juggernaut can be seen in the financial results of our Banks. Together, they rip twenty billion dollars a year from their customers in the form of profits, but produce absolutely nothing of value. Yet every year they are congratulated by their peers for “producing a profit”

With values like this, research doesn't stand a prayer.