E&OE

GEORGIA STYNES: We’ve been hearing about the CSIRO when news broke yesterday on Drive, and we brought that to you, the estimated 350 job losses, on top of the other job losses too that were announced earlier. So, we’re looking at around 1,100, if I’ve got the maths right. Also, the other point is that there are a lot of people on contracts whose contracts we’re being told won’t be renewed, so that figure of people who have worked at CSIRO that won’t if this latest 350 goes through, well, it’s probably much higher than 1,100. Many of you have expressed concern about the federal government funding for CSIRO and saying that it’s not being funded properly. As I mentioned earlier, the minister responsible is expected to be on ABC Radio tomorrow and was unavailable today. But many people have expressed, and many organisations have expressed, their disappointment. And of course, we also heard from Canberra Independent Senator David Pocock yesterday, who, and you heard him, was pretty fired up about the news as well. Today, Universities Australia is warning that the cuts are a sign of a broader issue with Australia’s entire research ecosystem. Here to talk us through this is Luke Sheehy, the CEO of Universities Australia. Good afternoon.

LUKE SHEEHY: Good to be with you, Georgia.

GEORGIA STYNES: When you heard that figure yesterday, a possible 350 more jobs, what was your initial reaction?

LUKE SHEEHY: It’s just another really worrying trend in the approach to research and development. At a time when countries like Australia need to invest more in our scientists, in our researchers and our whole innovation system so we can compete in the global race for economic security, this is another devastating blow, not only for our research system in Australia but for the hundreds and hundreds of individuals who are going into Christmas now without the certainty of employment. That’s just terrible news. It’s particularly bad for our friends in Canberra. You know, nearly one out of every five CSIRO employees is in Canberra. That’s devastating for the local Canberra community.

But it’s also just a really worrying sign about where we’re heading in Australia in terms of research and development.

GEORGIA STYNES: And what do you think it says about this current government when we look at research and development?

LUKE SHEEHY: We know this government has big aspirations. They want to lift Australia’s overall research and development investment to three per cent of Australia’s GDP. We are not even halfway there at the moment, at 1.6 per cent, 1.7 per cent. The OECD average is nearly three per cent. Australia’s already under-investing in our research and development, and we’re going to lose in the global race for research and development, which means we won’t have the breakthroughs, we won’t have the discoveries, we won’t have the necessary investment in people and research to develop our economy and to have those breakthroughs we want to see in Australia. For centuries, Australia has always overperformed in research and development and scientific breakthroughs. We know it. Wi-Fi, penicillin, the black box. There are so many wonderful things that Australia has contributed to the world through our research and development. And at the moment, we’re not even keeping up with inflation in the way that we fund CSIRO. University research is being squeezed and having to be funded not directly from government, but from other sources, including international students, and our businesses are really under-investing in research and development. It is a recipe for Australia to be a poorer and less economically diverse nation. We as universities want to see Australia uplift our research and development because it’s going to uplift our aspirations and our prosperity as a people.

GEORGIA STYNES: Luke Sheehy is my guest. He’s the CEO of Universities Australia. We talk about the brain drain or the research drain or whatever it might be in terms of losing the talent. Who do we lose them to when organisations like CSIRO or CSIRO make these decisions? Is it to private companies? Is it overseas? Where do they go?

LUKE SHEEHY: Certainly, the direction in Australia for R&D is going completely in the wrong direction. We know that the best and brightest in Australia are going to be looking offshore for opportunities. That’s in Europe with Horizon Europe and the billions of euros that the countries of Europe are investing in their R&D system. We’ve just come back from Universities Australia’s trip to China where nearly eight per cent of their GDP is an investment in research and development. Competitor countries in our region, like Singapore and South Korea, are investing billions and billions of dollars in their R&D effort to uplift their economy and to uplift their people. We will lose more and more Australians. The best and brightest Australians will go elsewhere to continue their research to benefit the global R&D effort. That is a tragedy. We need to stop that, we need to invest in our R&D, we need businesses to uplift and we need the government to step up to the aspiration it’s set for itself, which is to have three per cent of GDP in research and development in Australia.

GEORGIA STYNES: It’s been great chatting to you, thanks very much.

LUKE SHEEHY: Great to be with you, Georgia.

ENDS