The CSIRO will embark on further cost-cutting to research units in a bid to repair a multimillion-dollar budget shortfall, as Australia’s national science and research agency reckons with an ongoing decline in funding.
The institution’s annual funding level as a percentage of GDP has been falling with few exceptions over recent decades and is now at its lowest since 1978, a parliamentary library analysis commissioned by ACT senator David Pocock showed. Pocock requested data from 1980 in the analysis.
The analysis, which used GDP, CPI and population data to adjust for real figures, showed the CSIRO’s funding has dropped from 0.16% of GDP in 1978-79 to just 0.03% of GDP in 2024-25.
Under the Albanese government, the funding as a percentage of GDP has continued to decline after it briefly rose to 0.05% in 2020-21 as a result of a Covid-19 funding injection by the then Morrison government.
While the nominal funding figures have remained relatively steady, the adjusted figures represent real cuts to the agency over a nearly five-decade period.
Pocock said the CSIRO’s “value to our nation’s productivity, innovation and overall wellbeing cannot be overstated”.
“Successive governments need to stop asking it to do more with less and start once again investing in the kind of research that made us the lucky country back when the CSIRO was first established,” he said.
At a Senate estimates hearing on Friday, the CSIRO chief executive, Doug Hilton, acknowledged the agency’s budget allocation “has not kept up with the cost of doing science”.
Hilton said the CSIRO had to refit ageing buildings to “maintain safe, fit-for-purpose and, where appropriate and possible, cutting edge facilities”.
“We do have some challenging sustainability issues as an organisation,” he said.
The CSIRO’s funding cliff became apparent in recent years after the expiration of $454m provided in the October 2020 budget.
The agency’s budget statement in March showed there would be a $91m reduction in employee expenses for 2025-26 compared with the previous year.
The agency is undergoing a restructure in both research and non-research areas to fix its budget, which has so far led to a 12.7% headcount reduction since July 2024.
The CSIRO chief finance officer, Tom Munyard, told Senate estimates this amounted to about 818 jobs, with further job cuts expected to be revealed over the course of this financial year.
At a four-day workshop in Melbourne in September, research unit leaders met with management to determine where the CSIRO could “consolidate and focus” its research.
“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 an email before the meeting.
The science minister, Tim Ayres, disputed Pocock’s suggestion that the CSIRO’s funding had fallen under Labor but acknowledged the difference between nominal and real funding.
Ayres told Senate estimates the government had given the CSIRO a “significant contribution” but he expected the institution to make sure it was “on a sustainable budget footing”.
“I also want to make sure, as the minister responsible for science in the commonwealth government, that CSIRO is continuing to evolve its approach to making sure that its programs of effort are in line with the national science priorities of the country and what the country needs in order to solve the big national challenges in front of us,” he said.
The main public sector union, the Community and Public Sector Union, said the government should be “backing the CSIRO to be taking risks and tackling challenges, not forcing them to be penny pinchers”.
“But funding shortfalls are forcing hundreds of scientists and their research out the door. We’ve already seen more than 700 jobs cut from CSIRO, and hundreds more are expected to go,” Susan Tonks, the CPSU’s CSIRO spokesperson, said.
“If we are going to be able to tackle the challenges of tomorrow, we need publicly funded science and scientists to feel empowered and supported. But right now, staff at the CSIRO are looking over their shoulders wondering if it is their job that’s next to go.
“The Albanese government needs to step in and secure the future of science in this country.”