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| Chief executive Larry Marshall says the CSIRO is responding to federal funding cuts. (CSIRO) |
Hardest-hit will be CSIRO's Aspendale laboratories in south-east Melbourne, which were set up after World War II to improve weather forecasting and have since gained an international reputation.
The labs look certain to close as part of the shakeup unveiled earlier in the year by chief executive Larry Marshall.
The CSIRO's staff association estimated 32 jobs would be lost from the Aspendale facility, and some staff have already begun to receive redundancy notices.
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The redundancies are expected to save $6 million a year.
Dr Graeme Pearman, a former CSIRO scientist who helped set up the agency's climate science team, said he was shocked by the announcement.
"[I've had] a number of reactions; I guess the first one was quite emotional because these are the programs I built up and these are people I employed and worked with," he said.
"The second reaction is, why would you actually make a change to high-quality work related to the climate change issue, right at a time when we are now realising we have a serious problem on our hands?"
Dr Pearman said he felt as though his life's work was unravelling. He described the changes as being close to vandalism, and said he was convinced there was an agenda behind the decision.
"The agenda is this belief structure, this ideology, that somehow or other people who don't actually even know how science operates are audacious enough to say, 'well science should just be about wealth generation'," Dr Pearman said.
"That's an agenda, and we're seeing a possibility of it having a real impact on CSIRO's research."
But chief executive Dr Marshall said the CSIRO was responding to Federal Government funding cuts to climate science programs.
He said funding had fallen by 70 per cent in the past three years and was set to halve again in the next financial year.
"It would be great if we could fund everybody," Dr Marshall said.
"But given the finite envelope — both appropriation, government funding and external revenue — we've got to shift the emphasis from the measurement and modelling to the mitigation and adaptation."
After 18 months as the head of the CSIRO, Dr Marshall said he had never been to the Aspendale labs, but he planned to do visit.
"It was on the list twice, I know the Senate hearing conflicted with one visit, I'm not sure what conflicted with the other," he said.
"All of CSIRO, I'd argue, has outstanding science. That's what makes it so hard."
Closure is inevitable: CSIRO Staff Association
The CSIRO announced an internal review, by Ernst and Young, of the process used to come up with the cuts.
But there have been no suggestions the decision would be changed.
Science Minister Christopher Pyne refused to intervene, arguing the CSIRO was an independent agency.
Senator Kim Carr, the Opposition's Science spokesman, said he wanted staff cuts to be put on hold until after the election.
And he promised if Labor was elected it would direct the CSIRO to stop the restructure.
But Michael Borgas, from the CSIRO Staff Association, conceded the closure of the Aspendale laboratories, and relocation of the remaining scientists, was probably inevitable.
"As much as I'm nostalgic about the place, the vast majority of opinion is we'd go where the work would be done best, the science would be done best," he said.
"Obviously for personal reasons many people wouldn't want to leave Melbourne.
"But if there were better opportunities provided by co-locating with the Bureau of Meteorology or over at Clayton near the Monash scientists, and that we were going to do better science, then that would be the main thing that drove people."
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