Extract from ABC News
Updated
Staff at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial
Research Organisation (CSIRO) are calling for an urgent meeting with
Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane over proposed job cuts.
The
Federal Government has cut more than $110 million from the
organisation's budget, and staff have already held national protests
against the cuts.The CSIRO Staff Association is also hoping to convince the crossbench Senators to water down the cuts.
The organisation stands to lose about 700 staff in the coming financial year, on top of 477 jobs already lost in the past 12 months.
Bioanalytics and informatics leader David Lovell, who has worked with the organisation for 16 years, said research had been stymied.
"We've gone from a situation where we have lots of exciting research that we are pursuing and delivering to a situation where we're just stymied," Dr Lovell said.
"We won an iAward recently for a system which is being used to digitise small specimens and I've just found out that the team involved from that are potentially surplus to requirements."
In practical terms, the drop in funding means cuts to research in a range of areas, including geothermal, carbon capture and storage, and sensor development research.
CSIRO Staff Association acting secretary Dr Michael Borgas said he would be sending letters to the Industry Minister and the crossbench senators this week.
He said the meetings need to happen as soon as possible.
"We're under no illusions that there's simply a button that's going to be pushed overnight. There's a widespread lack of understanding I think about how the science that the nation does, particularly in its national laboratories or its public laboratories, and that's got to turn around," Dr Borgas said.
"The sooner we can start those conversations the better, but we're not pretending that we're going to get an instant outcome in this, but there's not a second to lose because we can't afford this sort of short-sighted cut to happen again."
CSIRO chief executive Megan Clark met staff in Hobart to address concerns about the job cuts this afternoon.
"Right now we are working through those discussions and as you can appreciate on a day like today, and this week, there will be some very difficult discussions and people need to understand and get clarity," Dr Clark said.
"Then of course we will look for deployment opportunities for them elsewhere in the organisation.
"But [it's] not an easy time and the moment for some of our staff and all of our teams to be honest."
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