Australian research community fights government cut-backs
Perth, Australia
Francisco Rojas
24 Jun 2014
With a severe reduction of over $AU 100 million and nearly 20% of the CSIRO workforce, areas such as geothermal will be greatly affected. This has sparked 14 protests by scientists all over the country.
The cutbacks to scientific research in Australia, have a huge impact across all renewables, and are devastating for the geothermal research in the country. A local news source reports that CSIRO is organising at least 14 protests to demonstrate their discomfort due to recent cutbacks. These protests will take place all over the country, starting in “Griffith, NSW, at noon today and followed later in the day at Newcastle and at sites in the Victorian city of Geelong, Geraldton in WA, Townsville and Atherton in Queensland and Alice Springs in the Northern Territory”, and other locations in the following days.
The same source informs that the origin for such protests can be traced back to the government’s “$115 million funding cut to Australia’s premier scientific organisation, in addition to indirect measures that will affect CSIRO such as cuts to Cooperative Research Centres (CRC), the Australian Climate Change Science program and Department of Industry initiatives such as Industry Innovation Precincts” as also reported by Think Geo Energy.
A member of the staff interviewed by the Canberra Times from CSIRO mentioned that 700 jobs have been cut in two years that represent 20% of the workforce and that the situation is dire for areas such as neuroscience, cancer, geothermal research, carbon capture technologies and other high tech sectors.
Source: Canberra Times Website
