Australia is cementing itself as a houses and holes economy, with the report today that the CSIRO will cut 1,400 science jobs:
Previous governments have fought to stem the flow of our cleverest minds offshore in their search for better pay and research facilities. Now, cuts from the previous and current Federal Governments are driving out one in every five jobs at the nation’s internationally renown research centre, CSIRO.
That’s the total loss of about 1400 scientists and assistants.
Science communicator Julian Cribb told ABC Radio yesterday the cuts were “lobotomising” Australia.
“We are damaging the machine that produces the knowledge that going to keep this country competitive and efficient in the future,” he said…
“We really are shooting ourselves, not in the foot, but in the head,” Mr Cribb said. “And it’s not just in CSIRO, it’s across the board in science at the moment.
According to the report, the areas that will be hardest hit by the CSIRO cutbacks are agriculture and biosecurity, land and water, technology, manufacturing, and mineral and energy. So it’s pretty much across the board.
Unfortunately, the dumbing down of the country won’t end there, with the Abbott Government’s reforms to university fees and funding, announced in the May Budget, likely to also induce shortages of science graduates.
Recently released estimates from the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM) showed that science students would be worst affected by the fee changes, with science students expected to experience a doubling of fee repayments to around $90,000 or more, which would obviously discourage student enrollments in the so-called STEM disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (see below charts).
But hey, who needs to innovate when you’ve got expensive houses and dirt?
