An Advisory Committee on Undergraduate Medical Education in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) was first established in 1965 and a major conference on Medical Practice and the Community held in the JCSMR on 26–30 August, 1968. In 1968, a new Committee on Medical Education in the ACT was set up and the Vice-Chancellor asked me to act as Chairman, but the detailed plan was carried out by a subcommittee chaired by Malcolm Whyte. Its report was debated by an expanded Committee in November 1969, circulated to the Boards of the Institute of Advanced Studies and of The Faculties in 1970. After much further discussion, the Vice-Chancellor told Council that the proposal was academically sound, that questions of shielding the rest of the University from any adverse effects had been ‘fully answered in policy terms by the Australian Universities Commission (AUC) and by the Government’ and that talks which Professors Fenner and Whyte had had with the health authorities and medical fraternity pointed to the probability of a satisfactory agreement on the integration of medical education and the local health services’. The proposal was submitted to the AUC in April 1971, but a decision was deferred until completion of the report of a Committee on Medical Schools set up by the Minister for Education and Science in June 1972. In July 1973, this report recommended deferment of the ANU proposal for a further three years, although new medical schools were approved at James Cook University and at the University of Newcastle. A Medical School was finally set up in the ANU in 1998 and accepted its first students in 2004. Its administration is housed in a building that was named the Frank Fenner Building in May 2003 (it should have been the Malcolm Whyte Building!).

The notion that the ANU might embark on some activity in an area called ‘resources’ arose at meetings of the ANU academic boards in 1965, when the Deputy Vice-Chancellor reported on the conclusions of the committee that had looked into the question of medical education in the ACT (see above). Some members of the Board suggested that other faculties such as agriculture, veterinary science or rural science should also be considered. The committee that was set up dismissed these suggestions, but the Universities Commission supported the idea that something should be done about a body to examine renewable natural resources. In November 1967 it was decided that a committee should be established to examine the feasibility of establishing a ‘Centre for Natural Resources’ in the ANU. Following receipt of a positive recommendation from this committee, the Universities Commission approved the Statement of Intent in its 1969 Report. The Vice-Chancellor, Sir John Crawford, then set up a new committee, which he asked me to chair, to consider the establishment of a Centre and Research School for Natural Resource Studies. Recast in a more modest form, a proposal for a Centre for Natural Resources (CNR), dated 1970, was part of the ANU submission to the AUC for the 1973–1975 triennium. After the report was submitted the committee decided that the word ‘environment’ should be included in the title, and the need for a convenient acronym gave rise to the name Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies (CRES). In its Fifth Report, published in August 1972, the AUC explicitly endorsed two proposals in environmental studies, one in ANU (CNR/CRES) and one in the University of Melbourne.

Among my extra-curricular responsibilities as Director was membership of the Advisory Council of CSIRO, and at its meeting in May 1972 the Council asked me to report to it on CSIRO and Medical Research. I submitted a draft report at the Advisory Council meeting in May 1973, which was approved in a general sense by the Council. During the next few months I had extended correspondence and personal discussions with Dr D. N. Everingham, the Minister for Health and Dr J. R. Price, Chairman of CSIRO. The final report (Fenner, 1973b) was submitted to the Advisory Council in October 1973, and contained three recommendations to CSIRO, which were accepted by the Executive, and two to the Australian government concerning medical research, which were not accepted. The recommendations to CSIRO were:

The last and most important recommendation was implemented in 1975, when the former Division of Biochemistry and Nutrition, located in Adelaide, was converted into the Division of Human Nutrition.