By Tess Ikonomou in Canberra

The head of Australia’s national science agency will defend planned job cuts, warning without a refocus the organisation risked doing nothing at scale in the future.

In an address to the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday, CSIRO chief executive Doug Hilton is expected to address the agency’s choice to cut jobs from key areas in the face of funding pressures.

He is expected to say the organisations faced a sobering backlog of essential repairs and renewal at the end of 2025.

More than 80 per cent of CSIRO’s 800 buildings were no longer fit for purpose, he will say.

Dr Hilton is expected to say the leadership team chose to exit some areas of science and narrow its focus rather than run the risk of doing nothing at scale.

The agency can do better with the resources already entrusted to it, he is expected to say.

Earlier this year in Senate estimates, CSIRO executives confirmed almost a quarter of remaining job losses would come from a key environmental unit.

Last November, the science agency said up to 350 research positions would be slashed as the “cost of doing science has gone up”.

Originally, almost half of those jobs were expected to come from the agency’s environmental research unit, which includes climate adaption science.

“We’ve received a very significant amount of feedback through that process, all of which we’ve read and thought about very carefully,” CSIRO acting chief executive Elanor Huntington told the public hearing.

“We have a six-stage major change process. We have now reached step five … we have confirmed with all of the affected research units the final sets of changes.”

The federal budget, handed down in May, set aside more than $387 million for the CSIRO over the next four years.

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