00:01Tuesday night's budget will contain an extra $387 million over the next four years for the CSIRO.
00:08The funding is in addition to the $278 million announced in 2025
00:13and tops up the agency's existing near $1 billion annual funding allocation.
00:18In addition to this, the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness in Geelong
00:22will receive an additional $38 million a year from 2030 to 2031.
00:27The Albanese government says the CSIRO is critical to the national interest
00:31and to solving some of the country's biggest challenges.
00:34Despite this announcement, Australia's National Science Agency will still face significant job cuts.
00:39CEO of the CSIRO, Doug Hilton, said this funding will make the agency more sustainable.
00:45This funding injection gives us real workforce stability into the future.
00:49That doesn't mean there won't be some changes because we should always be looking at the skills we need
00:55year on year to deliver the best possible science for Australia.
00:59The CSIRO Staff Association, part of the Community and Public Sector Union,
01:03says 1,150 jobs have been cut in the last two years.
01:08850 of those were in February 2024, with a further 350 announced late last year.
01:14This latest set of cuts, described as strategic research shifts,
01:17will go ahead in spite of Tuesday's budget allocation.
01:21Now that we've seen $387 million coming through,
01:25it's got to mean that there are no more job cuts to the CSIRO.
01:30It's deeply impacting their capacity to be the world-renowned research facility that it is.
01:35Some of the agency's previous scientific achievements include the invention of Wi-Fi,
01:40long-wear contact lenses and polymer banknotes.
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