The mood in parts of Australia’s national scientific agency is low after a mystery number of AI, robotics and data researchers were quietly let go within the last year.
Since the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation announced it was “reshaping its research portfolio” to deal with an imminent funding cliff in 2024, speculation about whose jobs are on the line has spread like wildfire.
Hundreds of roles in the health and biosecurity teams, including roles like finance, business and legal that support them, have already been cut. Within the agriculture and food research unit, hundreds more jobs hang in the balance.
Despite being spruiked as a key area of investment for Australia, the science agency’s data research unit – responsible for advances in artificial intelligence, robotics and quantum computing – is the next to be put under the microscope.
The staff at Data61, the artificial intelligence and data innovation unit, have already seen about 100 of their colleagues leave in the last year, according to the Community and Public Sector Union.
CSIRO’s chief executive, Doug Hilton, told a Senate estimates hearings last year no job cuts were planned for the data research team, and there would be no additional cuts to research capacity in 2024-25
But the union says more than 100 full-time research roles on two or three-year contracts were not renewed, nor replaced, in the last year.
The job losses represent about 20% of the research unit’s total workforce.
The union’s CSIRO spokesperson, Susan Tonks, said management had “deliberately and systematically” chopped the roles behind closed doors to avoid scrutiny.
In September this year, CSIRO said Data61 now had too many administrative staff given the reduced number of research staff. It meant some of those roles would need to be “reduced”.
“These cuts by stealth, made without transparency and with the union shut out of the process, are now being used to justify even more job losses,” Tonks said.
Guardian Australia asked CSIRO a series of questions, including how many contract positions it had discontinued in the last financial year.
“CSIRO is reshaping its research portfolio to ensure we are focused on delivering the science Australia needs now and into the future,” a spokesperson said.
“This will be done in line with well-established processes, policies and our Enterprise Agreement, including our commitment to consult with staff prior to decisions being made.
“In addition, CSIRO research units, including Data61, routinely conduct workforce planning which may result in small-scale changes.”
One researcher within Data61, not authorised to speak publicly, said the past 18 months had been their most uncertain at the science agency.
After plans to “reshape” the agency were announced to staff, the long-serving Data61 researcher recalled staff assuming that meant some colleagues would have to be made redundant.
“It went like from light to dark on a whim,” they said.
CSIRO’s funding cliff had been on the horizon but in early 2024, reality hit.
The agency’s chief operating officer, Tom Munyard, explained in November 2024 $454m had been provided in the October 2020 budget. It was due to end in 2023-24.
The 2024 federal budget papers showed CSIRO would receive $916.5m for 2024-25, a $92m decrease from the previous year’s $1bn.
As a result, CSIRO looked to make savings in all areas, including reducing its property portfolio and limiting staff travel.
But between 375 and 500 support roles – including administration, finance and legal – were identified to be cut.
Another Data61 researcher said a number of contracted researchers were not offered permanent roles when their multi-year contracts expired.
In the years since the pandemic, CSIRO launched a recruitment campaign to attract “Australia’s next generation of inventors, innovators and change makers”.
The “impossible without you” campaign offered contract roles to postdoctoral researchers for between two and three years.
Few, if any, have been offered permanent positions with contracts beginning to expire, they said.
Hilton invited research units to a four-day workshop in Melbourne in September to help management determine where it could “consolidate and focus” its research.
Those six areas of significance, Hilton said, were energy and minerals; food and fibre; nature; one health; tech economy and from wonder to discovery.
“Although we don’t know the details yet, I want to be clear: we will need to exit some research and do fewer things better, more deeply and more impactfully,” Hilton said in his invitation email.
But the researchers Guardian Australia spoke to say they felt unsure.
“I’m just generally not very convinced by the narrative that there’s a core master plan going,” one said.
“I can tell you what happens on the ground, and that is that we’re still a very skunkworks-heavy organisation.”
The independent ACT senator, David Pocock, said it wasn’t surprising CSIRO had to undergo cost-cutting exercises across the board due to budgetary constraints and the increasing cost of staff, research, IT and cybersecurity.
“The blame needs to sit at the feet of successive governments who have underfunded research, and the Albanese government who have known about the funding cliff CSIRO faces yet have not provided more funding,” he said.
The science minister, Tim Ayres, said staffing and prioritisation of resources were a matter for CSIRO, and that he respected their independence and work.
“This is the right time for CSIRO to be making sure that its activities are focused directly on Australia’s national industrial and strategic research priorities,” he said.