That $18.3 Million Three-year Scheme to Provide CSIRO With 40 Extra Postdocs and 10 New Positions for Leading Scientists. (August 23, 2006)

    On July 19, the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Julie Bishop in addressing the Sydney Institute referred to Australia suffering a likely short-fall of as much as 35% in its estimated requirement of 55,000 additional scientific professionals (just over 19,000 individuals) within six years.

Did the minister propose solutions for the problem?

In all fairness the budget the Federal Treasurer will bring down in May is some time off so it is problematic to what extent this predicament will be addressed. Nevertheless Ms Bishop told her listeners:

"Our bright young scientists should be encouraged to go overseas to gain international recognition and exposure, but we need to ensure that they have a reason to return to Australia. We need longer term research grants and research fellowships. On average the length of a research grant is 3 years. Given that researchers are expected to write their next application in year two when they should really be approaching the substance of the research, this is hardly an ideal situation. One idea is to make the ARC Discovery grants automatically 5 years of duration and I intend to examine this issue with the ARC.

"To this end, I announce this evening that CSIRO will increase its investment in its early to mid career researchers with an additional 40 new postdoctoral fellows and an additional 10 new CSIRO Science Leaders. The CSIRO Science Leader Scheme is directed to high performing scientists with between 5 and 10 years post-doctoral experience. This increased investment  will amount to $18.3 million over three years and provide important career  opportunities to Australian researchers."

The question arises, as was pointed out to TFW, "Just where will this $18.3 million come from?"

A spokeswoman for the Department of Education, Science and Training supplied this answer:

The 40 new postdoctoral fellows and 10 new CSIRO Science Leaders build on existing CSIRO schemes. As stated in the Minister's speech, CSIRO is increasing its investment in these areas by some $18.3 million dollars over 3 years. This funding will come from CSIRO's existing budget allocation and represents a significant commitment by CSIRO to increasing its support for early to mid career researchers.

In short CSIRO will receive no additional funding for these positions and the government so far has made no additional financial commitment to address the projected 35% shortfall in "scientific professionals".

As an aside, TFW was also advised by the spokeswoman that  "The Howard Government has increased CSIRO's base funding from $417.6 million in 1995/96 to $607.2 million in 2006/07 (an increase of 45.4%)."

 

It's worthwhile judging this statement by factoring in the CPI over the period.

 

The "all groups" CPI moved from 119.8 to 151.9 while that for education (the largest change) went from 151,1 to 260.1

 

Translating that to CSIRO base funding using the "all groups" CPI we have ($417.6M/119.8)x151.9 = $529.5M a change of +14.6% not +45.4%
Translating that to CSIRO base funding using the "education" CPI we have ($417.6M/151.1)x260.1 = $718.8M a change of -15.5%

 

What should be the CPI value to use would depend on a critical analysis on what the organisation spends its funding on, certainly salaries and purchases of foreign built equipment would be major factors but It would seem to be a reasonable conclusion that there was at best a marginal increase in funding, and to make the claim that the Coalition Government has increased base funding by 45.4% is disingenuous.

 

---