Impact of 2014 Australian budget

CSIRO has been impacted by a significant reduction in funding through the latest Federal budget, announced on 14 May 2014, as have many other agencies and activities funded by the Australian Government. A number of government agencies will be closed and some major programs such as the CRC program rounds have been cancelled. These actions will have flow-on impacts to CSIRO through reduced flow of external funding.

CSIRO's radio astronomy activities will be negatively impacted as a result of these effects. CSIRO remains committed to the delivery of ASKAP (the Australian SKA Pathfinder), to its broader SKA activities including its participation in the SKA pre-construction consortia, and to its continued delivery of the Australia Telescope National Facility as a world-class capability for astronomy research. We deliver excellent outcomes in these areas and will do so in the future.

However, CSIRO funding for radio astronomy activities will be substantially reduced and this will result in reductions to staffing and activities related to the operation of, and development of new instrumentation for, the existing CSIRO radio telescopes, and to CSIRO's own astronomy research.

CSIRO also remains committed to the ongoing delivery of its space-tracking activities to meet the needs of NASA/JPL through the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex at Tidbinbilla, near Canberra.

Work to clarify the specific impacts of the reduction in funding for radio astronomy science is underway. We will continue to keep our staff and community informed as we work through the situation.

-- Lewis Ball, Chief, CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science

Added by Helen Sim on 2014-05-19