The last issue of arq (no. 7) included an account of the recent Research Assessment Exercise undertaken in United Kingdom university schools of architecture and reported on the latest developments in the long-running debate on whether design can be regarded as research. This same debate has also taken place in Australian universities and Michael Keniger reported on the Refereed Design Scheme which had been evolved to resolve this problem. Here, Simon Pepper, an architectural historian who has been involved in this debate over many years, reflects on the issues and the Australian system.