Science Under Siege

And why saving science is saving democracy

The other night I fired off a quick tweet about the Albanese Government allowing CSIRO to shed another 350 scientists and research staff. The comments, forwards and likes went viral because people instinctively understand that this wasn't an obscure staffing matter. Sacking hundreds of scientists in the middle of a climate and extinction crisis is a choice about what sort of country Australia want to be.

CSIRO is not a niche agency. It helped invent Wi-Fi, developed polymer banknotes, and underpins our bushfire science, agriculture, biosecurity and climate adaptation and modelling. Yet right now our national science agency is being put through the shredder.

Over the past eighteen months CSIRO has already cut over 800 staff, as it tries to deal with a budget that simply has not kept up with the real cost of doing science. And it plans to cut a further 350 research roles in 2026, with big hits to environment, agriculture and food, and health and biosecurity.

Senator David Pocock asked the Parliamentary Library to trace the funding story. Their analysis shows CSIRO’s funding has fallen from 0.16 per cent of GDP in 1978–79 to just 0.03 per cent in 2024–25, the lowest share since the 1970s. In other words, the cuts aren't just a one-off shock. They are the latest instalment in a forty-year project of managed decline, now continuing on Anthony Albanese's watch. Even government backbenchers are alarmed. Labor MP Ed Husic has publicly urged his own party to “pry open the jaws of Treasury” and treat CSIRO as an investment, not a cost.

This is happening while the Great Barrier Reef bleaches again, while bush fires devastate communities, while floods close schools and submerge towns, and while threatened species quietly disappear. Gutting the very capacity we rely on to understand and respond to these crises isn't just short-sighted. It is a form of national self-harm.

From doing science to saving science

Michael Mann and Peter Hotez’s book Science Under Siege describes a global ecosystem of anti-science politics: the polluters and plutocrats with money to lose, the professional contrarians, the propaganda machines, and parts of the media that use science as culture-war fodder. A key take home from the book is that scientists can no longer sit quietly in their laboratories and hope the world will get better. They have to stand up for science itself, and ally with broader pro-democracy movements.

Australia clearly isn't immune to this global trend. We love to say we “believe in science”, but when governments allow CSIRO and the Australian Research Council to shrink in real terms, and when universities are expected to cross-subsidise research from increasingly fragile budgets, the signal is the opposite. It tells scientists that their work is optional and disposable, especially when it produces inconvenient truths on climate and biodiversity.

Cuts to science weaken democracy

This isn't only about jobs and grants. It is about democracy’s ability to deal with reality.

Science is one of the few social systems that insists on evidence, peer review and transparency, and that expects people to change their minds when the data change. Authoritarian politicians hate that. They demand loyalty over truth, talking points over data, and short-term electoral sugar hits over long-term planning.

Hollow out public science and three things happen. First, essential work simply stops. When you sack ecologists, fire scientists, climate modellers and disease specialists, you lose eyes on Country, you lose long-term datasets, and you lose the ability to warn early and plan ahead. In a continent as climate-exposed as Australia, that is reckless.

Second, power shifts to private interests. When public research is weak, corporations and lobby groups fill the vacuum. They fund the studies they like, bury those they don't, and rebadge marketing as “innovation”. Regulation becomes negotiation between ministers and industry, not between evidence and risk.

Third, public debate degrades. If independent experts are outnumbered by spin doctors and think-tank talking heads, then the loudest voices become the ones with the biggest advertising budget and the angriest culture-war machine. At that point you might still have elections, but you no longer have a fully informed democracy. Sound familiar? Like Australia's obsession with fossil fuels.

Choosing what sort of country we want

Investing in CSIRO and public research isn't a green of so-called Left-wing luxury. It is nation-building infrastructure. Every dollar spent on science pays for itself many times over in avoided disasters, better health, smarter land management and new industries. Yet the Albanese Government is presiding over the deepest cuts to public science in decades, then trying to spin them as modernisation and “sharpened focus”.

If Labor is serious about “respecting expertise” and “restoring integrity”, here's the test: it must stop the 350 CSIRO research job cuts, rebuild real funding, and treat science as core infrastructure for a safe, fair Australia.

The rest of us have a role too. We can support campaigns like David Pocock’s petition. We can tell our MPs that firing scientists in a climate and extinction crisis is political malpractice. We can stand up for universities, research agencies, and for the right of scientists to tell uncomfortable truths without being punished.

Saving science isn't separate from saving democracy. It's the same project. If we let science wither, we choose a future where decisions are made in the dark, and where reality is whatever the loudest voices say it is. That's not a future I'm prepared to accept.

CSIRO's budget is one-fifth of what it was in the 1970s