ASPENDALE seems set to be targeted for science job cuts for political reasons in a blow to Melbourne’s south east economy.
An internal email from a management member of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) released last week to a Senate inquiry into the national science body’s plans to axe up to 350 jobs, mostly in climate change research, stated any job losses in Hobart should be minimised.
The majority of the CSIRO’s climate change research is conducted in Aspendale and Tasmania.
The partially redacted email stated the unnamed CSIRO official would work to “minimise impacts at Hobart – need to address loss of employment in TAS (a regional political issue)”.
Federal Isaacs Labor MP Mark Dreyfus accused the federal government and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of “politicking of the most sickening nature”.
“This is not a time to mince words: Mr Turnbull has sold out Melbourne’s south east. He has cut national funding to the CSIRO and then focused these cuts on our community,” he said.
“Mr Turnbull is playing with the jobs of CSIRO researchers in Isaacs to minimise political damage in Tasmania. People’s livelihoods are at stake here and Mr Turnbull is callously thinking about politics.
“Every member of our community will feel the direct or indirect shock of these cuts.”
When asked whether the federal government would consider Labor’s request to postpone any CSIRO job cuts until after this year’s federal election a spokesperson for Liberal Industry, Innovation and Science Minister Christopher Pyne denied there had been any federal budget cuts to the science organisation despite a $110 million CSIRO funding cut over four years announced by the Abbott government in 2014.
Mr Pyne’s media adviser Eleisa Hancock said a statement should be attributed to “a spokesperson of the Minister’s office” when asked for a spokesperson’s name for the claim.
“There have been no changes in government funding to the CSIRO. Any suggestion that this was a result of changes to the CSIRO budget is incorrect,” the statement claimed.
“The CSIRO is an independent statutory agency governed by a board of directors. The board in conjunction with senior management are responsible for operations, including staffing, and setting the CSIRO’s priorities.”
The statement noted Labor cut $63.4 million from the CSIRO over four years in 2008.
The internal CSIRO email was released to the Senate inquiry amid controversy about senior staff using private email communications to plan job cuts.
An email dated 18 January this year from another unnamed CSIRO management member focused on climate change research cuts and stated: “I think we should aim for -120 staff … because it would allow a clean cut in terms of eliminating all capability associated with ‘public good/government-funded climate research’.
“If we aim for less we will inevitably face the problem of keeping some of the climate scientists (who will no longer be aligned with the new CSIRO strategy). If we go for more, we will loose [sic] important non-climate related capability.”
CSIRO CEO Larry Marshall has said there has been no final decision as yet on the number of jobs to be shed across the country.
Mr Marshall told staff last month the CSIRO would “pivot” to support Australia’s commodities industry and data mining is also a future growth area for science research.
Late last year the Turnbull government restored about $20 million of $42 million in CSIRO annual information technology research funding stripped away by the Abbott government.
First published in the Chelsea Mordialloc Mentone News – 13 April 2016
