The Council's current exercise, in addressing the balance of ARC funding across the disciplines, complements its earlier work on the balance of funding across its programs. Taken together, these two considerations are important elements for the Australian Research Council meeting its responsibilities, as defined in the Act of Parliament which established the Council. Both exercises are strongly founded on Council's view of the strategic rôle of academic research and the imperative of ensuring, as far as is possible, that the maximum benefit to the Australian community is achieved from the annual expenditure of A$250 million of taxpayers' money.
It is important to note that the conjunction of significant uncertainties in the Research & Development data available to the Council and the undesirability of abrupt changes to research funding, dictate that any changes to funding-levels in individual disciplines be phased-in gradually.