CSIRO confirms nearly 100 redundancies despite huge funding boost
The axe has fallen for close to 100 staff at Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), just six months after the agency announced major job cuts were on the horizon.
That’s despite the promise of a $387.4 million funding boost for the agency over four years in the May federal budget.
Nearly 100 jobs have been cut despite a recent funding boost for the CSIRO. CSIRO
Executives from the CSIRO announced dozens of redundancies during budget estimates last night.
A spokesperson for the CSIRO confirmed to nine.com.au that 92 staff would be affected by 86 redundancies and six early term cessations.
“Following careful consideration of staff and stakeholder feedback, CSIRO’s Environment Research Unit will progress with a reduction of 92 positions,” they said.
“CSIRO’s current changes and the recent announcement of additional Federal funding in the Budget provides greater certainty and workforce stability over the next three financial years.
“We are committed to ensuring CSIRO remains strategically focused to deliver impact at scale, now and into the future.”
News of these losses comes less than a year after the agency announced it would have to slash up to 350 research positions due to funding pressures.
The spokesperson said these job cuts make up part of that figure.
“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,” they 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 agency revealed last year that it is facing “long-term financial sustainability challenges, with funding not keeping pace with the rising costs of running a modern science agency”.
After decades of stretching resources, it needs to invest up to $135 million per year for the next 10 years to continue to be sustainable.
The decision was made to cut hundreds of jobs and shift towards a “sharpened research focus” around core areas like energy, AI, and robotics.
“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,” chief executive Dr Doug Hilton said at the time.
“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.”
The agency has cut up to 1150 jobs since February 2024, according to the CSIRO Staff Association.
“The recent job cuts to the CSIRO saw the Federal Government undermine the capacity and capability of Australia’s leading research agency,” the association said last month.
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