Has the Australian Synchrotron Found a Protector from the Bureaucratic Tyrannosaurs? (July 21, 2012)

On March 28, 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. It was very much a robbing Peter to pay Paul effort 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.

However, so far as upgrading the facility was concerned that remained on hold, i.e. there were to be no increases to the 9 beamlines currently available even though it has the capacity to provide at least an additional 10 beamlines.

Then on April 5 The Australian's Bernard Lane reported 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."

Now Elizabeth Finkel reports in Science: "The federal government is expected to announce next month that the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) in Sydney will take the troubled facility under its wing. 'I have great expectations,' says William Thomlinson, former director of the Canadian Light Source and a former adviser to the Australian Synchrotron. 'ANSTO will bring the synchrotron up to speed. I've seen them in action.'

If that means that staff numbers will not be reduced the 10% envisioned by Keith Nugent and those additional beanlines will be installed in the foreseeable future remains to be seen -- as well as bringing to a close the pathetic bureaucratic incompetence which became public in 2009 and led to seven of nine members of the synchrotron's International Scientific Advisory Committee to resign.

Professor Nugent, says the instument: "has a 20-year lifetime as a state-of-the-art machine. We're already 5 years in and well behind." By comparison, he says, the Canadian Light Source is barely 3 years older than Australia's but already has 17 beamlines.

As Dr Finkel sees it: "it's up to ANSTO to remove the real-world pressure [the Australian Synchrotron staff] have been enduring."