sydney

The Australian Geological Survey Organisation (AGSO) is to lose one-fifth of its funding and staff numbers as a result of budget cuts announced after the 1999-2000 budget earlier this month.

Among those hit is the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, which shed A$151 million to a total budget of A$2,333 million (US$1,547 million). An increase of seven per cent to support industrial innovation by industry has coincided with greater cuts in other programmes, including AGSO.

The organization experienced similar budget cuts three years ago, losing full-time access to a survey vessel but gaining a new building (see Nature 381, 547; 1996). Staff numbers had reduced to 490 this year and are now expected to fall to around 400.

According to an internal memorandum, AGSO is balancing its books by phasing out land surveys and some other scientific programmes, sacking all its palaeontologists and reducing staff in its minerals division by a quarter.

Senior research scientists will have to compete with administrators for a reduced number of executive posts. And closure of the stores in its new building means that AGSO will lack in-house equipment to support fieldwork: projects will have to buy or lease gear and transport from their own reduced funding.

One geologist says that AGSO had prided itself on becoming one of the first branches of the public service to introduce promotion based on merit rather than seniority. Now, he says, “nine of those promoted to principal research scientist out of 14 in the minerals division are being given no choice but to accept redundancy. Staff are devastated.”

A government official admits that the cuts are “unfortunate”, but says they are a direct result of the ending of two major projects, the National Geoscience Mapping Accord and the Law of the Sea Project. In future, AGSO's operations will “focus more on offshore petroleum work and Australia's marine jurisdiction work”.

But Malcolm Walter of Macquarie University in Sydney describes the closure of land surveys as “a devastating blow”. Bob Day, president of the Australian Geoscience Council and a former chief geologist in the state of Queensland, says: “The losses will only exacerbate the crisis for geoscience with up to half of Australia's 8,000 geoscientists now out of a job.”

Peter Cullen, president of the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies, is calling for a strategic review of government investment in geoscience. “The government is letting the nation's skill base slip through our fingers at the first signs of a downturn,” he says.