A bit off topic. But just to clarify: Not really. Most PhD...

A bit off topic. But just to clarify:

Not really. Most PhD students get paid with government-funded scholarships (used to be called APA) which should be circa $25K per annum (slavery). Others that are not on APA most often get paid via university-sponsored scholarships (same amount) which comes off research grants (so indirectly funded by the government or sometimes by industry partners). Pocket money, but there is rarely anybody doing PhD for free.

Hiring a postdoc (which is not a student) to do the research is much more expensive (6 digit salary plus super and overhead). But then that is a full-time job and not really a scholarship.

As for the second part (degree requirements), no they don't need 2 previous degrees (i.e. undergrad and masters). An undergrad (Hon) is sufficient. But, yes you are right in saying that they already are relatively experts in their specific fields.

As for the recent TTT announcement which was about an ARC grant. They are government-sponsored research grants (highly competitive to get one) which are used to fund research, pay researchers, etc. There is also a version of it called ARC-linkage which is jointly funded by the government (ARC) and an industry partner (say TTT). The benefit is it lets the industry partner access the university expertise and facilities and also do the research project relatively cheaper; on the other hand, it reduces the government funding burden. Side benefit is the industry partner gets to indirectly train and attract next generation experts (current students) to its technology.