Selected CSIRO media mentions for the week commencing 2 February. If you encounter a paywall, request a text version by emailing the article title here.
The science of sacking – CSIRO chief Doug Hilton announced he’s sacking 350 scientists, but the $965K pa head of the science body now refuses to have his own ‘sacking science’ publicly reviewed… By Rex Patrick, Michael West Media. 19 January 2026 (link, text below).
Statement regarding the Senate inquiry – CSIRO’s submission to the Senate Inquiry into ‘funding and resourcing for the CSIRO’ is now available. A Senate Inquiry into ‘funding and resourcing for the CSIRO’ was established in November 2025 and examines a broad range of topics including CSIRO’s long-term sustainability and proposed changes to our workforce as we reshape our research portfolio… CSIRO media statement, 5 February 2026 (link, text below).
We won’t get interoperability without the CSIRO, says AIDH – CSIRO cuts are “a short-term, poorly considered move” with “longer-term ramifications”, the Australasian Institute of Digital Health warned the Senate’s Economics References Committee in a submission to its open inquiry, Funding and Resourcing for the CSIRO, due to report to the government on the last day of March… Health Services Daily, 3 February 2026 (link, text below).
Research Australia’s post – We are deeply concerned by the recent announcements of further job and program cuts to the CSIRO. The termination of 300-350 full-time roles at the CSIRO represents a 6% decrease in the current workforce, in addition to the 818 pre-existing job cuts made in the past 18 months… Linkedin, 3 February 2026 (link, text below).
Eye-opening report reveals surprising truth about future power costs: ‘You can’t have everything’ – A new report by the Australian government’s science agency found that, to meet 2050 net-zero pollution goals, the country may have to add costly nuclear energy and offshore wind to its electricity mix, which mostly consists of solar and onshore wind… The Cool Down, 31 January 2026 (link, text below).
—
By Rex Patrick, Michael West Media. 19 January 2026
CSIRO chief Doug Hilton announced he’s sacking 350 scientists, but the $965K pa head of the science body now refuses to have his own ‘sacking science’ publicly reviewed.
Back in April 2024, in the context of a newly announce ‘Made in Australia’ policy, MWM wrote about our flat-lined manufacturing as a percentage of GDP (5%) and our plummeting economic complexity world ranking (105th).
We did not blame the Albanese Government for this … it’s taken many governments, all focussed predominantly on exporting our rocks and fossil fuels, to get this to happen. With optimism we wrote of new opportunities to fix the manufacturing percentage and the economic complexity numbers.
Our optimism was caveated on the need for strong and effective leadership. The question was, did Albanese have what it takes? “I guess we’ll see, in due course”, we proposed.
Wrong course
On 18 November last year CSIRO’s Chief Executive, Dr Doug Hilton, issued a statement of intent for the organisation. Embedded in the announcement were the words, “the organisation will need to reduce roles in its Research Units by between 300 to 350 full-time equivalent …”
As we sit at 105th position in the world’s ranking of economic complexity, down from 62nd in 1995, and the Government’s response is to reduce the number of scientists looking to determine our future.
The move has, rightfully, drawn attention from the parliament, with Greens’ senators Barbara Pocock and Peter Whish-Wilson, and independent Senator David Pocock initiating a Senate inquiry into the CSIRO.
Don’t blame us
Responding to a question on job cuts when announcing the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the Government was not to blame, pointing the finger at CSIRO’s senior leadership.
“From the government’s point of view, we’ve been increasing their resourcing, $45 million extra last time, $233 million extra this time and that’s because we believe in the crucial role that science broadly and the CSIRO plays in the future of our economy.”
“How the CSIRO manages their budget is a matter for them and their Board, they’ve made it clear that the pressures on their budget have not come from Government cuts, on the contrary we’ve been increasing their budget,” Dr Chalmers said.
It was akin to Prime Minister Albanese suggesting that travel allowance abuse was not his responsibility, about a week before he was forced to refer the issue to the Remuneration Tribunal.
CSIRO is an organisation that contributes directly to the nation’s future, but the Government’s washing its hands of the manner in which it’s configured.
A Freedom Of Information (FIO) request by MWM has revealed the Government has been kept fully abreast of CSIRO’s plans, including a substantive brief that goes back as far as 2024.
Scientist secrecy
MWM’s FOI request was for ministerial briefs and any internal analysis on the effect of the sackings on Australia’s science capability. After initially threatening to not process the request on the grounds that it involved 2,586 pages of relevant information (which resulted in MWM narrowing the scope of the request), CSIRO has declared it has two ministerial briefs and Executive Team documents that it is not willing to share with the Australian public.
The million-dollar CSIRO top scientist doesn’t want his research peer or publicly reviewed.
The two briefs that are being withheld from the public are ministerial briefs, but that’s not stopping CSIRO from calling them cabinet documents. CSIRO acknowledged that the briefs have not been to Cabinet.
It appears CSIRO is good at science and awful at administrative law (perhaps being awful suits them). The reasoning provided in the FOI decision will fail on review.
Shrinking violets
Recognising the fragility (or perhaps, improperness) of their Cabinet exemption claim, CSIRO also asserts that disclosure of their work will take them from almost seven-digit salaried tall scientist to wilted violets unable to function.
It’s a case of “our advice is fearless, although we actually fear anyone but the minister seeing it’.
MWM will submit on appeal that this sort of advice is advice the minister should have no regard to. We will also ask under cross examination if the CEO thinks his salary allows him to do anything other than give the most candid advice.
Dehumanising
Another reason the public can’t see the documents is because doing so “could be reasonably expected to cause undue stress or other emotional or psychological harm to a large cohort of CSIRO staff (whether ultimately actually affected by the subject matter or not).”
CSIRO management thinks that announcing to their scientific team that 350 of them will lose their jobs won’t cause them undue stress or other emotional or psychological harm, but the pathway that management took to come to that decision will.
350 scientists will go, and CSIRO’s not saying who. The best information they have is that 130-150 will go from the 715 ‘Environment’ scientist pool, 100 -110 from the 329 scientists in ‘Health and Biosecurity’ and 25-35 from the scientists 364 ‘Minerals’.
They all got to spend Christmas lunch with their families contemplating their futures, yet somehow the giving of details of the sacking science will cause greater harm to them.
Perhaps the advice-cowards in Executive team weren’t listening when Senator Pocock told Hilton at Senate Estimates of a letter he’d received from a CSIRO employee writing ‘The system is not only dehumanised; it is now dehumanising.‘
Hunger Games … but not for AUKUS
Senator Whish-Wilson did have a minute at the end of the Estimates hearing to question whether ‘Hunger Games’ were now being played out inside the organisation, as reported by media.
Once can only imagine the laboratory atmosphere.
Meanwhile the Albanese ministry happily obfuscates. The Government needs to control the budget so that they can properly fund economic complexity in the AUKUS shipyards of the US (15th place for economic complexity) and UK (7th place).
Australia, in their view, don’t seem to appreciate the need for domestic manufacturing and diversity of exports. They clearly believe that our future lies in exporting fossil fuel – and are granting long term approvals accordingly.
And with 150 fewer environmental scientists around, there’ll be fewer hurdles standing in the way of their plans.
—
CSIRO media statement, 5 February 2026
CSIRO’s submission to the Senate Inquiry into ‘funding and resourcing for the CSIRO’ is now available.
A Senate Inquiry into ‘funding and resourcing for the CSIRO’ was established in November 2025 and examines a broad range of topics including CSIRO’s long-term sustainability and proposed changes to our workforce as we reshape our research portfolio.
For 100 years, CSIRO has been entrusted with public funding and has delivered research that has underpinned Australia’s prosperity, resilience and global competitiveness.
CSIRO has made a submission to the inquiry which demonstrates:
The inquiry reflects the significant public interest in CSIRO and the value placed on its contribution to the nation over generations.
Read CSIRO’s full submission.
Quotes attributable to CSIRO Chief Executive, Dr Doug Hilton:
“CSIRO is acutely aware of its accountability to the Australian community and its elected representatives in parliament and welcomes the Senate’s decision to establish the inquiry.
“Australians understand the impact that science has on their lives and on the future of the nation. This inquiry is testament to the concern and interest their elected representatives have in Australia’s national science agency. So, it is a welcome discussion for us – as both an organisation and as a community – to be having at this time.
“Our inquiry submission offers a frank and transparent assessment of the complex challenges facing CSIRO, and why we must make difficult but necessary decisions to ensure a sustainable and enduring national science agency for the decades ahead.”
—
Health Services Daily, 3 February 2026
CSIRO cuts are “a short-term, poorly considered move” with “longer-term ramifications”, the Australasian Institute of Digital Health warned the Senate’s Economics References Committee in a submission to its open inquiry, Funding and Resourcing for the CSIRO, due to report to the government on the last day of March.
The inquiry is looking into job and program cuts announced for the CSIRO, the impact that will have on public science, Australia’s science capability, the science workforce, the role of the CSIRO, and the particular effect of the cuts on the Environment Science Unit, among other things.
“Australia is at a pivotal juncture. Digital health and AI research is essential to building and sustaining a connected and integrated healthcare system,” said Anja Nikolic, CEO of the AIDH.
“Cutting the capacity of Australia’s peak science agency in digital health and data now is a false economy.
“It risks stifling the innovation and partnerships we need to deliver safer, more connected care, and which actually yield economic benefits.”
The CSIRO’s Australian e-Health Research Centre focuses on four core areas (AI, precision health, virtual care and interoperability) “that are vital and indeed essential if Australia is to maintain our enviable reputation as a world leader in health and digital health”, the AIDH submission said.
The CSIRO is a partner in developing and implementing FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources), which “allows the safe, secure and seamless transfer of health data between computer systems by using a common language that health software systems understand”, the submission noted.
“My Health Record (MHR) is one example of a digital health system utilising FHIR.”
And the AEHRC leads Sparked, the “groundbreaking” FHIR accelerator which “is central to the government’s much lauded agenda of having healthcare providers share information between them to allow for integrated and multidisciplinary care, and to upload personal health information so consumers have much more timely and accessible access to their health records and pathology and imaging results”, the AIDH said.
Cutting yet more jobs from the CSIRO at this time was “a retrograde step” that would end up costing us more in the long run, the submission said.
“[R]esearch and innovation in healthcare and related sectors is increasingly expensive and requires high-level expertise. However, cutting jobs and reducing expenditure in areas related to building and maintaining a world-class digital health system will likely have long-term implications that stifle innovation and discourage investment.”
The AIDH said that it “strongly opposes” the job cuts and called for more funding for the AEHRC.
“If we want equitable access to digitally enabled care, we need sustained investment in the science, standards and workforce capability that make safe information sharing possible,” Ms Nikolic said.
Other submissions made to the inquiry noted that now was a particularly bad time to pull science funding, with Australian universities facing economic pressures, US president Donald Trump’s assault on science institutions and research, and the impacts of climate change that were being seen in Australia and our region.
They also noted the negative effect cuts would have on productivity, on the continued erosion of sovereign science capability and infrastructure, and on our abilities to fulfill our international obligations and maintain relationships.
Read the full AIDH submission here.
—
Linkedin, 3 February 2026
We are deeply concerned by the recent announcements of further job and program cuts to the CSIRO. The termination of 300-350 full-time roles at the CSIRO represents a 6% decrease in the current workforce, in addition to the 818 pre-existing job cuts made in the past 18 months.
As a critical organisation within the health and medical research and innovation system, investments in the CSIRO should not be viewed as discretionary spending, but as strategic public investment towards achieving a future-ready, prosperous and thriving Australia. Now is the time for government to position public investment in health and medical research and innovation as a catalyst to delivering long-term and equitable social, economic and productivity dividends – not overseeing the decline of our national research capabilities.
In our submission to the Senate Inquiry into Funding and Resourcing for the CSIRO, we have outlined key recommendations to reverse the troubling trend of declining investment in our public science agencies and publicly funded research.
—
The Cool Down, 31 January 2026
A new report by the Australian government’s science agency found that, to meet 2050 net-zero pollution goals, the country may have to add costly nuclear energy and offshore wind to its electricity mix, which mostly consists of solar and onshore wind.
What’s happening?
According to the Australian Financial Review, collaborative research by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the Australian Energy Market Operator found that if the country generated 82% of electricity from solar power and onshore wind, it would meet its 2030 clean energy goals while slashing wholesale electricity prices by one-third.
However, some analysts argue that it may not be able to build sufficient renewable capacity to meet the target, and therefore, customers wouldn’t see significant savings in electricity bills.
But Paul Graham, CSIRO chief energy economist who led the GenCost research, delivered some good news. Given substantial uncertainties about the future costs of offshore wind, it may be an affordable energy source, alongside solar and onshore wind. Large-scale battery prices fell by 15% in 2025, with further drops expected, which should play a key role in boosting grid resilience.
“It would be great if we could get costs even lower, but I suppose you can’t have everything,” Graham added.
“So we’ve got the abatement, and we can keep costs about where they are now, that’s a good thing, with some relief in the short term to 2030.”
Why are the findings important?
While the report is overall positive, particularly if Australia can achieve a largely renewable grid by 2030, the possibility that electricity prices may be higher than expected is discouraging.
That’s why using nuclear, offshore wind, and carbon capture to generate electricity is a last resort, and a combination of established technologies — solar, onshore wind, coal, gas, and hydropower — is expected to be the most economical way to power Australia.
If the country meets its 2030 renewable energy goals, wholesale electricity costs are projected to be $91 per megawatt-hour. But by 2050, the report forecast that wholesale prices would rise to between $135 and $148 per megawatt-hour, compared to the current average cost of $129.
Analysts found that allowing a small amount of dirty gas was more cost-effective than aiming for a completely pollution-free grid, as the Guardian reported.
Relying more on clean energy sources such as nuclear and onshore wind would be better for the planet and people’s health, but the report found that large-scale nuclear power is significantly more expensive than renewables in Australia, with costs potentially twice those of solar and wind, and requiring at least 15 years for deployment. However, onshore wind costs have stabilized, indicating potential for future growth.
While nuclear has significant advantages, including the ability to produce low-carbon electricity 24/7 and a high energy density, its upfront costs, long lead times, and current legislation in Australia prohibiting nuclear power plant construction “limit its potential to play a serious role in reducing emissions within the required timeframe,” noted the CSIRO.
How can I lower electric bills in the short term?
As the Guardian noted, Australians experienced an average 40% increase in electricity prices last year. While its clean energy transition is underway, residents may consider investing in rooftop solar panels, enrolling in community solar, or leasing panels for immediate savings on electricity bills.
.