Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Hansard source

I think it's important to step through, in a careful way, what it is that is being undertaken at the CSIRO. It is 15 years since the CSIRO has undertaken a proper strategic examination of its research priorities to make sure that every science dollar—and this government every year has allocated close to a billion dollars to the CSIRO—is allocated to a program of research which is squarely within the national science priorities of the CSIRO and the government. That is the exercise that the management and the board of the CSIRO have embarked upon. It is absolutely in Australia's national interest that the work of the CSIRO is directed absolutely directly at every one of those national science priorities and not in other areas. That is the work that is going on. I think that you will discover over the coming weeks and months that the areas of emphasis that the CSIRO and the programs of research that they are leaning into are absolutely in the national interest, absolutely in the interest of strengthening the CSIRO and making sure that it is fit for purpose for the decades ahead.