Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australians owe the CSIRO a debt of gratitude. It has generated dozens of world leading interventions and commercial innovations—among them, wi-fi, the polymer banknote and the Hendra virus vaccine. But the CSIRO, Australia's premier research agency, has been forced to turn property developer to make up for the Abbott government's deep funding cuts to science. Yesterday the CSIRO announced that it is seeking approval to redevelop a major tract of land in my electorate that had previously been used for agricultural research. The CSIRO has asked the National Capital Authority to rezone the Ginninderra Field Station site on the Barton Highway as urban area in the next amendment to the National Capital Plan, due out next year. It would allow the CSIRO to sell or build on the site for commercial development.

Plainly, this has occurred because the Abbott government slashed $115 million from the CSIRO's funding in its 2014-15 budget. The agency has lost 1,200 science and support staff in the last two years, the largest job cuts in the organisation's history. This is from a government which came to office without a science minister—the first time that had happened in Australia since the 1930s. When CSIRO staff rallied last year, some of them told me that they never imagined that they would be taking part in a political rally. They never wanted to be dragged into politics. It was the Abbott government's savage cuts to science which had forced them to do so. The CSIRO has been forced to close or merge several of its research sites, including eliminating a world-class irrigation research team at Griffith in New South Wales and consolidating sites in Canberra.

Australia spends less on scientific research than the OECD average, and the federal government's investment in knowledge and innovation as a share of our national income has slipped to the lowest level in 30 years. This is short sighted at a time when the economy is transitioning from the mining boom and we need more ideas and innovation, not less. And yet, just to go through some of the Abbott government's $900 million cuts to science and research, they include $80 million from the Cooperative Research Centres program, $115 million from the CSIRO, $75 million from the Australian Research Council, $27 million from ANSTO, $8 million from AIMS, $16 million from Geoscience Australia, $120 million from DSTO, $174 million from the Research Training Scheme—a literal decimation of that scheme; and the abolition of NICTA from 2016-17, effectively an $84 million cut. The latest budget saw further cuts—another $327 million cut from Australian science and research. (Time expired)