The ARC’s purpose is to "grow knowledge and innovation for the benefit of the Australian community through funding the highest quality research, assessing the quality, engagement and impact of research, and providing advice on research matters".
The ARC supports the highest-quality fundamental and applied research and research training. They encourage national competition across all disciplines outside of clinical and other medical research. They advise the Government on research matters and administer the National Competitive Grants Program (NCGP), delivering around $800 million per year to the most dynamic researchers in Australia.
ARC grants are competitively awarded to individuals, research teams and large-scale centres through 2 broad arms: the Discovery Program, which supports individuals and small teams, and the Linkage Program, which creates links between universities, industry and other partners.
ARC deliver the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), which assesses research quality within Australia's higher education institutions. ERA provides a national stocktake, by research discipline, against international benchmarks.
ARC administer the Engagement and Impact Assessment, (EI) which evaluates the engagement of researchers with end-users and shows how universities are translating their research into economic, social, environmental, cultural and other public good.
Clinical and other medical research is primarily supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council.