Millions for CSIRO: Science agency to get funding boost

The Canberra Times can reveal that the mid-year budget update to be released next month will include more than $100 million for the science agency, which is struggling to stay within its budget and preparing to cut up to 350 more research jobs.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers told the ABC on Wednesday that the government had "continued to provide substantial funding, stable source of funding for the CSIRO, but their operating costs have been outstripping their revenue for some time now."

"We always try to fund the sciences as best we can," Dr Chalmers said. "We are big believers and supporters of the CSIRO."

CSIRO chief executive Doug Hilton said the agency was grappling with a $280 million repair and maintenance backlog, with more than 80 per cent of its 840 buildings "past their technical end of life".

Repairs to one building alone - the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness in Geelong - would cost about $1 billion, he said.

Dr Hilton said the agency also needed to invest between $80 million and $135 million a year for the next 10 years into maintenance and equipment upgrades, including cybersecurity.

ACT independent senator David Pocock, who on Wednesday launched a petition calling for a significant funding increase to the CSIRO, said the agency had been "starved of the long-term funding needed to maintain essential infrastructure and build the capability modern science demands".

"Years of delayed investment are now catching up with us, and the cost is not just financial, it's human," Senator Pocock said, calling for "long-term, stable funding for the people and infrastructure that underpin Australia's research future."

Since the latest round of job cuts was announced on Monday, he said, "my office has been inundated with messages of distress from affected staff and strong support from the ACT community for protecting the CSIRO".

"The federal government's funding for the CSIRO has eroded for decades, falling to less than half what it was per person in the 1980s and dropping 87.5 per cent as a share of GDP."

Labor backbencher and former science minister Ed Husic also called on Wednesday for his government to "pry open the jaws of Treasury" to lift the CSIRO's funding.

He said the job cuts would result in a "loss of research capacity," telling the ABC he wanted the science agency to be "funded in a way that is good for the country in the long term."

"If you want to find the money, you'll find it," Mr Husic said. "I mean, we found $600 million for a football team in Papua New Guinea, I'm sure we'll be able to find the money for our national science agency."

A spokesperson for Science Minister Tim Ayes said the government "wants to see CSIRO staff working in safe, technologically effective and rewarding research facilities that are fit for purpose".

The CSIRO was an independent agency that made its own decisions about resource allocation "and the minister respects its independence," the spokesperson said.

Opposition industry and innovation spokesperson Alex Hawke said Australians relied on "the innovative work done by our CSIRO researchers" and that the Coalition was concerned that the agency's job cuts would "hurt Australia's sovereign capabilities".

Mr Hawke blamed the job losses on "Labor's cuts" to the science agency.

The CSIRO's budget allocation has been rising by about 1.3 per cent a year, below inflation, meaning it has been cut in real terms.