A “significant” funding lifeline will not spare the jobs of several hundred research staff at Australia’s national science agency, its boss has warned.

Chief executive Doug Hilton said Csiro would press ahead with plans to jettison the equivalent of at least 300 full-time workers, and abandon fields where it lacked the resources “to tackle them at scale”, despite receiving an extra A$233 million (£115 million) in the government’s 17 December mid-year budget update.

A spokesman said the extra money would help Csiro maintain research in “priority areas” and “take the first steps toward addressing our long-term sustainability challenges”. But retrenchments and research activity cuts would still be necessary to address “steep rises” in costs and “the cumulative impacts of an ageing property and infrastructure portfolio”.

The spokesman said Csiro’s funding had risen by about 1.3 per cent annually over the past 15 years, while inflation had averaged 2.7 per cent. The agency now faced decade-long outlays of between A$80 million and A$135 million a year to update research infrastructure and pay for “critical repairs and maintenance”.

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Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the extra funding would be allocated over two years and followed an additional A$45 million in the last budget. He acknowledged the agency’s escalating costs but said it had not suffered cuts “on our watch”.

“We’ve been increasing funding,” Chalmers told journalists. “That’s because we believe in the crucial role that science…plays in the future of our economy. How the Csiro manages their budget is a matter for them and their board.”

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The mini-budget also includes top-ups of A$79 million for medical research and A$41 million for the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. Learned academies welcomed the “one-off” boosts but said they would not make up for a long-term deterioration in overall resourcing of research and development.

“More than 10 years of decline in science funding cannot be restored in one budget,” said Australian Academy of Science president Chennupati Jagadish.

Science lobbies hope the final report from the Strategic Examination of Research and Development (Serd) will unlock additional funding in next May’s budget. A mini-budget document says the government “will consider future funding for…science agencies pending further consideration of broader policy priorities”.

Times Higher Education understands that science minister Tim Ayres has received the Serd report but will not respond to it this year.

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Meanwhile, the academy has criticised a “short-sighted” mini-budget cut of up to A$12 million from a five-year-old scheme called the (GSTDF). “It was only in September that Minister Ayres publicly expressed his enthusiasm for the fund,” Jagadish said.

Science news website Innovation.Aus in July that the government had enlisted consultants Deloitte to review the scheme.

Peter Derbyshire, acting chief executive officer of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, said the GSTDF was the main federal support programme for overseas scientific cooperation. “Now is the time to lean into our international scientific connections, not cut back on them,” he said.

The mini-budget document confirms the government’s intention to develop a “framework of remuneration classification ranges” for vice-chancellors’ pay. It also estimates that last July’s hike to student visa application charges will earn the government A$740 million by mid-2029.

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john.ross@timeshighereducation.com