The union covering Commonwealth Scientific Industrial and Research Organisation (CSIRO) wants Labor to urgently halt its proposed job cuts to the country’s major scientific research organisation.
Susan Tonks, CSIRO Section (CSIRO Staff Association) secretary, which is part of the Community and Public Sector Union, said Labor’s job cuts to publicly funded science are “some of the worst”.
“Our scientists are protecting crops from disease, building national resilience in the face of a changing climate, strengthening our defences against biosecurity risks, and driving innovation in health and technology,” Tonks said. “These cuts will hurt,” she said, and called for urgent funding that “secures the future of CSIRO’s world-leading science and research”.
Federal science minister Tim Ayres said more than 300 jobs will go. It is feared that many more are in jeopardy, as large-scale restructuring will cut core scientific research, end long-term projects and reduce science support roles.
“The gutting of CSIRO also flies in the face of the federal government’s plans for a ‘Future Made in Australia’”, Tonks said.
A CSIRO Staff Association snap poll revealed plummeting morale as staff bargain for a decent pay rise in line with industry standards, job security and safe workloads.
Science and Technology Australia CEO Ryan Winn said CSIRO’s emphasis on inventing and deploying solutions to “tackle national problems” is important and that “without a continued investment in fundamental research and discovery, there will be no future innovations to deploy”.
Winn said the cuts are compounded by CSIRO underfunding. It needs an additional $80–135 million each year, he said, “to ensure essential research infrastructure and technology facilities can be maintained”.
CSIRO employs about 5800 staff — cutting 350 jobs affects 6% of its workforce. Greens science spokesperson Senator Peter Whish-Wilson said on November 20 that 150 of the proposed job cuts will come from the Environmental Research Unit — a reduction of 20%.
“Scientists at the CSIRO have been under pressure for years to find revenues to justify their work, including researchers working on public good science such as climate, environment, and oceans research,” he said.
Retired CSIRO Chief Research Scientist Dr Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe told Green Left that “nothing surprises me about CSIRO, since it was corporatised in the late nineties”.
He said it was under Prime Minister John Howard that the CSIRO was “turned into a money-making enterprise, in which it had to earn 30% of its income.
“Prior to that, the fixed policy was that it was to be fully funded by the federal government, and the Chiefs of Divisions decided what research should be supported — with outstanding results.
“During its entire existence, the total cost of running the Division of Entomology, for instance, was one-tenth of the benefits that had flowed to the country from its research!”
Stewart Sweeney wrote in Pearls and Irritations on November 21 that private capital will not build a world-class science system.
“What is happening to CSIRO is … the culmination of much deeper, longer-term failures,” Sweeney wrote, including the “longstanding refusal of Australian capital to invest, at meaningful scale, in scientific research, technological development, value-adding, or complex manufacturing”.
He said governments had hollowed out the institution and “stable public funding for science was replaced by short-term grants and revenue-chasing”.
“CSIRO’s long-term mission was pushed aside in favour of commercialisation models ill-suited to early stage research,” he said. “Universities were left to cross-subsidise research through international student fees. Public laboratories and scientific agencies were remodelled to mimic corporations, instead of serving the public good.”
[Sign the Save Our CSIRO petition.]