By Robbing Peter to Pay Paul Australian Synchrotron Survives, But Remains Straight Jacketed. (March 29, 2012)

The Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and Research and Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Chris Evans, yesterday announced that a four-year $100m rescue package has been scraped together in order to allow the Australian Synchrotron to continue operations.

The funding package is being provided through redistribution of existing allocations: $25 million from the Australian Research Council, $5 million from the National Health and Medical Research Council, $25 million from Australia's universities, $26 million from the state of Victoria and $5 million from New Zealand, $4 million from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and $10 million from the Science and Industry Endowment Fund.

In the case of the ARC, it has promised that there will be no effect on its Discovery program where success rates for grant applications are already below 20%.

The $100 million will be used to defray operations expenditure. So far as upgrading the facility is concerned that remains on hold, i.e. there will  be no increase to the 9 beamlines currently available even though it has the capacity to provide an additional 10 beamlines.

At the beginning of this year Alan Finkel suggested that it might be compared to a Ferrari being used as a city runabout.

Of course it is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL that we have a surplus in the 2012/13 federal budget.

[Note added 5/4/12-- The Australian's Bernard Lane reports the: "just-rescued synchrotron, one of Australia's landmark science facilities, has to cut spending by at least 10 per cent, director Keith Nugent says. He confirmed that the $100 million, four-year rescue package, announced last week by the Commonwealth and Victoria, would not fully cover running costs at the Melbourne facility. 'There will have to be some belt-tightening,' he said, although he stressed nobody wanted savings to affect the 'current high level of science' at the synchrotron."]