Albanese urged to ‘secure the future of science’ as CSIRO reckons with ongoing decline in funding

CEO Doug Hilton says the agency’s budget allocation ‘has not kept up with the cost of doing science’

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CSIRO will embark on further cost- cutting to research units in a bid to repair a multimillion-dollar budget shortfall, as Australia’s national science and research agency reckons with an ongoing decline in funding.

The institution’s annual funding level as a percentage of GDP has been falling with few exceptions over recent decades and is now at its lowest since 1978, a parliamentary library analysis commissioned by ACT senator David Pocock showed. Pocock requested data from 1980 in the analysis.