The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) has warned that an ongoing agenda of aggressive cuts at the CSIRO is putting Australia’s long-term productivity and innovation capacity at risk.
Under the leadership of Doug Hilton, the CSIRO is enduring the organisations biggest job cuts in a decade. More than 440 staff have already been cut and approximately 200 contract jobs were left to expire, with hundreds more cuts expected to be made to research units later this year.
These cuts come at a time when Australia’s investment in research and development is already low by international standards.
In a submission to the Economic Reform Roundtable, the union has warned that Australia’s long-term productivity and innovation capacity is being actively undermined by aggressive job cuts and underinvestment in the public institution that powers research, science and economic growth.
Public investment in R&D is often what delivers innovation that lays the groundwork for commercial breakthroughs and increased productivity. The CSIRO has been responsible for some of the most important scientific innovations in Australia’s history, including the invention of Wi-Fi, plastic bank notes and aerogard.
The CPSU is calling on the federal government to step in, stop the cuts and commit to the long-term stability of Australia’s national science agency.
“The work of the CSIRO is essential to lifting national productivity and driving economic growth.
“Unfortunately, there’s a clear disconnect between the government’s talk about boosting productivity and their failure to support the very institution that helps deliver it.
“Publicly funded research and development is where some of the biggest gains in productivity have come from.
“But deep job cuts at the CSIRO are directly undermining Australia’s ability to innovate, compete and grow. And this will continue to be the case as long as this government sits on its hands while hundreds of staff at the CSIRO are shown the door with little to no explanation.
“If this government is serious about productivity, it must step in, stop the cuts, and back our country’s peak science institution.”
The CSIRO has long been a world-leading public research institution and properly resourcing it is critical to Australia’s research and development capacity and, by extension, our national productivity. However, recent significant job cuts are undermining the capacity of the CSIRO, including in critical areas like agriculture, health, and digital technology.
CSIRO’s unique role in providing long-term, independent research – often in areas where the private sector has little incentive to invest – supports innovation across the economy. If Australia is serious about lifting productivity investing in world-leading R&D the Commonwealth must properly fund the CSIRO.