FAQs

Q.   What is Australia 21’s operating budget and from where does it currently derive its financial support?

A.  Now in its sixth year of operation, Australia 21's budget has increased progressively from $60,000 a year to approximately $250,000 in 2006. These funds have come from individual private donations, grants from charitable foundations, universities, and from sponsorship of roundtables by state and federal government agencies. During 2006, one of the programs completed work on a significant contract with the Victorian Government on its greenhouse gas emission policies.

With expansion in both the number of programs and the need for full time researchers on several of the programs, Australia 21 is now developing partnership and sponsorship arrangements for its individual projects with the private, corporate, charitable, university and government sectors. The company is also planning the development of a private trust, suitable for bequests and major contributions that could generate a regular income to maintain the company’s very modest infrastructure.

Q.   How do Australia 21 programs work and how are funds used?

A.  Each of the Australia 21 projects is committed to a major issue for a period of two to five years. Each project  has a leader and a core group of thinkers and researchers who maintain the impetus of the program, which brings together in roundtables and workshops outstanding thinkers and researchers from multiple disciplines and institutions around the nation. The task of each network is to explore new ways of thinking about their topic and the development of new policy approaches to unsolved problems. Already, some of the Australia 21 programs have resulted in outcomes that could change the way Australians do business in the future. The evidence from the Canadian organization (www.ciar.ca ) on which Australia 21 is modelled, is that this approach is an efficient way to generate innovative and productive thinking about large national questions. Project  funds are used to free up participants in the networks from administrative and teaching responsibilities to concentrate on the agenda of the network and to employ full time researchers to undertake specific tasks identified by the networks. About 15% of the company budget is reserved for a very modest infrastructure, but much of the activity of the organisation including the activities of the Directors is carried out pro bono.

Q.   What is the benefit to corporations and private and government sponsors from involvement with Australia 21?

A.  Platinum sponsors (at least $100,000 per year) and Gold sponsors ($50,000-100,000) of individual programs are able to participate in roundtable discussions and to have their names associated with an Australia 21 Fellow, Scholar or Associate, who receive part salary and expenses for their role in the activities of the networks. Named Scholars, Fellows and Associates may build active relationships with their sponsors. Active involvement of this kind in the program enables the sponsor to ensure that its voice is heard in the deliberations of the network and that the findings of the network are quickly available to the sponsor. All corporations which are linked with a specific program as either Silver sponsors (10,000-50,000) or Friends (under $10,000), are automatically circulated with the working documents of the network of which they are a Sponsor or Friend. Sponsors and Friends are acknowledged on the Australia 21 website and they are free to advertise their association with Australia 21 which has already become a respected contributor to thinking about Australia’s future.

Q. How independent is the organization and what control do funding agents exercise over its activities.

A. The great strength of Australia 21 is its independence and freedom from political ideological or sponsor control. The board is determined to maintain this strength. Our focus is on public good and on excellence. We seek to bring to all of our programs, broad stakeholder inputs and a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. The findings of all of our programs are intended for the public domain. The benefits to sponsors do not extend to control over the products of the programs, but they do include the opportunity to ensure that their inputs are heard as well as early access to the group’s conclusions.

Q. How is Australia 21 governed?

A. The organization is governed by an honorary board of directors who have strong links to the corporate, academic, government and community sectors. All expenditures of the board are under the control of a research sub committee which is required to ensure that activities of the organisation accord with the objects of the organization which are:

• To promote the development of new frameworks of understanding about the questions which challenge Australia’s future.

• To raise and distribute funds to support interdisciplinary and inter-institutional dialogue, and germinate new research on these matters.

• To create networks between researchers, community and business leaders, and policy makers across all sectors of society, to ensure that emerging insights are widely understood and applied to societal problems.

• To make the results of its research freely available to the public.

Q. How do Australia 21 programs add value to what is already happening in the research and development field in Australia? What is unique about the organization?

A. The strength of this approach is that A21 creates new linkages between people who are already experts or leading thinkers in the field and builds an environment in which they are able to interact and explore new approaches to the problems with which they have been grappling. Experience shows that it is in interdisciplinary and inter-institutional explorations that exciting new ideas and opportunities emerge. Tight focus around the problem and its disciplines is a feature of conventional research and development in Australia. What is unique about Australia 21 is the independence of the company and its ability to bring together expertise from wherever it exists in Australia or elsewhere. The meetings of the networks are highly prized by the participants themselves.

Q. What is the scope and scale of the Board’s plans for the future?

Each network when fully operational is likely to require an annual commitment of approximately $0.5 million annually. The history of A 21’s Canadian counterpart, The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research has been that it has managed 8-10 five year programs at a time during the past twenty years, and that these programs have been powerfully influential on policy development in that country as well as internationally. The Board of Australia 21 is currently considering a number of other themes for future Program Development, but needs to develop a stable funding base for its current programs first.

Q. What is the taxation status of Australia 21?

A. Australia 21 Ltd is a company limited by guarantee managed by a Board of Honorary Directors. It is an Approved Research Organisation, registered with the Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training. It is income tax exempt and has been endorsed as a deductible gift recipient under the terms of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997.