A current senior scientist, granted anonymity to speak freely, said staff had been told that CSIRO was “in the black” for years – until CEO Doug Hilton announced the organisation was financially unsustainable.

“I think Doug was correct – things have been ignored and papered over,” said the scientist. “We used short-term money to bring a lot of people on with a lot of promises. The COVID money was blown on vanity projects that committed money beyond the boost.”

Despite the one-time funding boost, Hilton revealed this week a $280 million maintenance backlog, with more than 80 per cent of the organisation’s buildings beyond end-of-life. “Effectively, I would say it was mismanaged. Especially when you consider the infrastructure issues it could have been spent on,” said the senior scientist.

A CSIRO spokesman rejected claims that the extra funding was wasted.

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“CSIRO used this short-term funding to mitigate against the impact of COVID-19 on its commercial activities, while supporting Australia’s pandemic response,” the spokesman said.

“This included deploying CSIRO’s capability to support vaccine development, increase virus research, provide public health monitoring, including wastewater monitoring for COVID-19, and support domestic manufacturing to ensure the sovereign supply of protective surgical masks.”

After the funding boost, the CSIRO launched a huge campaign to recruit scientists in 2022. The agency’s total headcount swelled by 1397 people between 2020-21 and 2023-24.

Employee benefits, the CSIRO’s largest expense, have jumped 29 per cent since 2019.

The COVID funding boost expired in 2024. The CSIRO’s latest annual report reveals the organisation ran an operating deficit of nearly $60 million and failed to meet its key financial targets.

In October, new Science Minister Tim Ayres issued new directions to management, ordering the agency to clean up its books.

“They knew about the budgeting problem for years,” the former senior staff member said. “They did nothing until it was all too late. They have struggled with setting and executing a property strategy – which is drowning the organisation – then they wasted so much on corporate initiatives, meant to improve the science, that just never delivered.”

The CSIRO’s spokesman said government funding had not increased at the same rate as inflation, which squeezed the agency. “The cost of doing science and running a science agency has risen above inflation, which has led to a significant increase in operating costs,” he said.

In 2022, the CSIRO launched its “Impossible without you” campaign, which recruited 206 early-career researchers to “help solve seemingly impossible challenges for Australia”.

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The roles were so broad that the CSIRO asked potential candidates to suggest what they could contribute, according to the former senior staff member. “There were no real projects for them to work on,” the former senior staffer said.

The CSIRO spokesman also rejected that claim. “The premise of the question fails to acknowledge the incredible dedication and contribution of the early-to-mid career researchers that joined as part of the IWY program.”

Ayres said the job cuts were not because of a funding shortfall.

“These are not spending-related cuts,” the minister said. “This is a reprioritisation exercise to make sure that the work that the CSIRO is doing, in every respect, is in line with national science priorities.”

He said it was natural for a systemic look to be taken at the CSIRO’s research priorities after 15 years and conceded there were pressures on the institute, including ageing facilities.

“That’s not a problem I’m going to walk past as the minister. [I’ll be] working closely with the CSIRO and my colleagues in government to make sure that, over time, we develop a sustainable, fit-for-purpose, modern CSIRO that’s delivering for Australia.”

Union, opposition call for bailout

This week, the union representing CSIRO scientists and the federal opposition called on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to bail out the venerable public research institute.

“The ALP is in government. They need to commit urgent funding that stops the cuts,” said Susan Tonks, secretary of the CSIRO Staff Association, which is part of the Community and Public Sector Union.

“Long term, you need more funding going forward. You can’t just keep saying, ‘You need to be sustainable’.”

“Long term, you need more funding going forward. You can’t just keep saying, ‘You need to be sustainable’.”

Susan Tonks, CSIRO Staff Association

The association said the cuts at the CSIRO were worse than those under Tony Abbott’s prime ministership – a claim Albanese rejected on Wednesday.

“That’s just nonsense,” Albanese said in Perth. “Tony Abbott gutted the CSIRO. We are supporting scientific research.

“What we’re making sure is that the funding is going in the right directions, and what the staff there will know is that there’s a substantial increase in staff, a substantial increase was made in previous budgets.

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“We support science, and we support the CSIRO, and we want to make sure that every single dollar of funding for scientific research is going in the right direction.”

Australia’s spending on research and development has been in long-term decline as a percentage of the country’s GDP, even as other advanced economies boost their research budgets.

“The prime minister and science minister will spend billions fighting for manufacturing jobs at Tomago or Whyalla, but cut funding and silently sacrifice equally critical jobs at our national science and research agency,” said independent senator David Pocock.

“In opposition, Labor called for better funding, yet in government, they are delivering cuts. They must commit to long-term, stable investment in CSIRO, so our scientists have the tools they need to deliver the breakthroughs our country depends on.”

Alex Hawke, the opposition spokesman for industry and innovation, told the ABC he was shocked by the cuts.

“We’d like to see the government supporting the CSIRO,” Hawke said. “They’re certainly talking a big game on science, especially climate science … yet somehow, the CSIRO is shedding jobs and losing money. It doesn’t stack up, and the government does need to step up here.”

Calls for a bailout were echoed by the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences & Engineering and by Science and Technology Australia. The latter’s chief executive, Ryan Winn, said the CSIRO needed long-term, stable investment.

“We have been going backwards in research investment for more than 15 years. It’s time to turn that around,” Winn said.

Universities Australia chief executive Luke Sheehy called the cuts “a warning light for the entire research ecosystem”.

“If we continue to under-invest, we will lose the talent, infrastructure and breakthroughs that drive jobs, national security and technological strength,” Sheehy said.

Professor Chennupati Jagadish, the president of the Australian Academy of Science, told the ABC the job cuts were now widespread across the sector as funding shortfalls began to bite.

“[Funding] going backwards for the last 15 years or so means the entire research sector is struggling, not only CSIRO. Huge amounts of job cuts are taking place across the entire sector,” he said.