ABSTRACT
The location of think-tank researchers on a continuum between academics and political researchers, defined primarily in terms of a trade-off between timeliness and depth of research, makes criticism difficult. Political researchers, on the other hand, are adept at rapidly assimilating large amounts of information and foreseeing the policy, political and media implications of the different facets of the issue under examination. Australia’s 42 universities are major locations of policy-relevant knowledge, and the 24 000 academics employed in them are potential workers in policy research. Although the dominant activity in Australian universities has been teaching, they have recently been putting increasing emphasis on research, largely as a consequence of the funding criteria of the federal government. Think tanks have been set up with the specific purpose of generating policy-relevant research. In a sense, they seek to bridge the gap between academic research and the day-to-day of policy practice, bringing academic research to bear on current policy issues.
