If you've ever used Aeroguard, the announcement this week that CSIRO would cut another 350 jobs should alarm you. And it's a wake-up call for government. At precisely the time you would expect Australia to be building its ability to conduct cutting-edge public science, our premier scientific agency is sacking people.
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CSIRO tried to characterise the cuts as "a renewed emphasis on inventing and deploying technological solutions to tackle national problems", but it's blatant cost-cutting. The news of the 350 full-time-equivalent researcher jobs being cut comes on the back of another 800 jobs being cut in the past 18 months.
Australians have always been fiercely proud of the CSIRO - and rightly so.
Few public institutions anywhere in the world can boast a track record like it. CSIRO is globally respected. From fast Wi-Fi, the polymer banknote, the Hendra virus vaccine, breakthroughs in radio astronomy, and world-leading climate modelling, CSIRO has repeatedly punched above its weight. The debt of gratitude Australians owe CSIRO for Aeroguard alone can never be repaid.
Which is why it's so alarming to watch its funding - and its people - bleed away.
The timing of these cuts couldn't be worse. With the United States gutting its universities and medical research sector - Trump's America has become a terrifying place to do science - Australia has a once-in-a-generation chance to attract some of the world's top researchers. Instead we're sacking researchers by the hundreds.
We could be seizing this golden opportunity to mop up global scientific talent, instead we are sending the opposite message: Australia cannot (or will not) fund its national science agency.
The reality is, CSIRO has been chronically underfunded. For years and years its government funding has not kept pace with inflation, including the rising costs associated with conducting research, cutting its budget in real terms.
CSIRO has already been compromised by nearly a decade of Coalition cuts, "efficiency dividends," and outsourcing. ACT senator David Pocock asked the parliamentary library to crunch the numbers and it found that CSIRO's funding has dropped from 0.16 per cent of gross domestic product in 1978-79 to just 0.03 per cent of GDP in 2024-25.
Science, research and development drives not just innovation, but productivity. CSIRO reported it generated "an 8.8:1 return on every dollar invested into CSIRO, equating to $13.2 billion in economic, environmental and social benefit to the nation," in its 2023-24 annual report.
The Albanese government defended the cuts as "reform." Science Minister Tim Ayres says the job losses will help "refocus" CSIRO on the "technologies of tomorrow." But it's hard to build the future by hollowing out the very institutions responsible for creating innovation.
The Canberra Times's exclusive that next month's mid-year budget update will include more than $100 million for CSIRO is welcome. But it's nowhere near enough to undo more than a decade of underinvestment - or address the $280 million repairs backlog in an organisation where 80 per cent of buildings are past their technical end of life. One building alone - the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness in Geelong - needs $1 billion in repairs.
In this context, a $100 million injection is little more than plugging holes in a sinking ship.
It's part of a wider problem. Australia chronically underfunds research and development in general. Australia has amongst the lowest government support for R&D in the OECD. And the private sector isn't much better. On the whole, business and governments probably spend more on advertising than R&D.
Chronic underfunding has led to concerns that the CSIRO is becoming a "glorified consultancy". That's what renowned climate scientist Professor David Karoly labelled it back in 2022. He warned that an increasing proportion of CSIRO funding now came from external funding, including contracts with industry.
"It means public good science has disappeared from CSIRO unless someone else is willing to pay for it."
In the past the Australia Institute has also raised concerns about CSIRO's partnerships with industry which provide funding, including its controversial Gas Industry Social and Environmental Alliance (GISERA).
GISERA is an alliance of gas fracking companies, including Santos, Origin Energy, Shell, China National Offshore Oil Corporation and Tokyo Gas, and the CSIRO that provides scientific research and information to communities living in gas development regions. In 2020, a GISERA study claimed to show that fracking - where a high-pressure mix of water, sand, and chemicals is injected to create fractures in rock - was "safe for the environment", but the study was actually overseen by the gas industry, and was based on just six of Queensland's 19,000 coal seam gas wells.
"The credibility of GISERA is fatally compromised by having gas company executives on its research management committees. The way GISERA operates does not pass the pub test," said Professor Ian Lowe said at the time.
Plainly, this partnership with the gas industry creates, at minimum, a perception of conflict of interest, and raises legitimate public concerns about CSIRO's independence and integrity.
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If the government keeps forcing CSIRO to behave like a consultancy then that is exactly what we'll get - one whose scientific direction is increasingly shaped by corporate priorities, not the national interest or the public good.
As former science minister Ed Husic observed, "If you want to find the money, you'll find it ... I mean, we found $600 million for a football team in Papua New Guinea, I'm sure we'll be able to find the money for our national science agency."
He's right. Australia is one of the richest countries on Earth, we can certainly afford to properly fund our premier scientific agency.
The Albanese government must now decide what it stands for. Does it want a publicly funded national science agency capable of independent, long-term research in the national interest? Or a hollowed-out consultancy chasing commercial contracts to stay afloat?
Great countries have great institutions. The CSIRO is one of ours. But even the greatest institutions can be worn down by chronic neglect.
The CSIRO helped build modern Australia. It deserves better than managed decline.
- Ebony Bennett is deputy director for The Australia Institute and a former Greens media adviser and a regular columnist
