Another 151 research positions axed at CSIRO despite $387M federal budget boost

Australia’s premier scientific body is undergoing a massive structural overhaul, sacrificing hundreds of frontline research roles in a bid to secure its long-term survival.

Over just a matter of days, a rapid succession of cuts has claimed 151 positions at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

The casualties include 92 workers from the Environment Research Unit.

Another 59 staff from the health and biosecurity teams have also been axed.

The widespread redundancies are part of a brutal downsizing flagged late last year, which targeted up to 350 research positions.

According to union figures from the CSIRO Staff Association, the bleeding is part of a much larger haemorrhage, with the agency cutting up to 1150 jobs since February 2024.

The rapid scale of the cuts comes despite a massive $387.4 million funding injection over four years, unveiled in the May federal budget. Finance and Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher stated the investment was designed to give the agency “the stability it needed” to continue delivering its work and plan for the future.

But she admitted she could not guarantee further jobs wouldn’t be lost.

“The way CSIRO is established is as an independent organisation; it has a board, and it makes decisions independent of government, and the government supports that,” Ms Gallagher said.

She added that the government believed the funding “will put CSIRO on a sustainable footing”.

However, CSIRO management maintains the agency has been plagued by deep-seated structural issues.

Executives revealed last year the organisation faces “long-term financial sustainability challenges, with funding not keeping pace with the rising costs of running a modern science agency”.

Decades of stretched resources mean the agency requires an investment of up to $135 million per year for the next decade just to remain viable.

To cope, the agency is aggressively narrowing its focus, aggressively abandoning projects that lack critical mass to pivot toward lucrative, hi-tech sectors like AI, energy, and robotics.

“CSIRO has made strategic choices to evolve our research, to focus efforts where we can deliver the greatest national impact following a comprehensive review of our research portfolio,” a CSIRO spokesperson said.

“To achieve this sharpened focus, we need to deprioritise areas where we lack the required scale to achieve significant impact or areas where others in the ecosystem are better placed to deliver.”

The strategy has led to a major consolidation of internal departments.

Of those 151 total losses, the latest 59 jobs were axed as a direct by-product of a merger between the Health and Biosecurity unit and the Animal Health Laboratory into a consolidated Biosecurity Research Unit.

While the CSIRO insists the newly formed unit will maximise its expertise across animal, human, and plant health without hurting the critical diagnostic capabilities of the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness, external scientific bodies are deeply alarmed.

Chief executive of Science and Technology Australia, Ryan Winn, described the job cuts as “another blow” to Australia’s science capability, particularly given recent memory of the Covid-19 pandemic and a current diphtheria outbreak.

“The health and biosecurity team at CSIRO already went through job cuts two years ago. How can we expect to keep or attract people to be part of Australia’s STEM workforce when there is so much instability?” Mr Winn said.

“These jobs are not just a loss to the CSIRO, they could impact Australia’s capability to respond to future health and biosecurity emergencies.”

The agency’s leadership remains steadfast that these painful measures are the only way forward. Chief executive Dr Doug Hilton previously defended the overhaul as a survival mechanism.

“These are difficult but necessary changes to safeguard our national science agency so we can continue solving the challenges that matter to Australia and Australians,” Dr Hilton said.

“We must set up CSIRO for the decades ahead with a sharpened research focus that capitalises on our unique strengths, allows us to concentrate on the profound challenges we face as a nation and deliver solutions at scale.”