Senate Economics Legislation Committee [Part 2], , 1:25:23 to 1:29:08
Discussion regarding the annual review cycle for research portfolios, the balance of permanent versus contract roles, and rising operational costs related to cyber security and IT infrastructure.
Topics: Public service staffing, Government spending
Speakers: Dr Doug Hilton, Senator David Pocock, Professor Elanor Huntington, Unknown Speaker
>> Is there any budget saving from this?
>> No, this is not a budget saving measure
>> No money saved.
>> No, absolutely not.
>> Um, how many of the roles that are subject to consultation uh and may be cut are permanent positions?
>> perhaps do you want to talk to that? You mean total of the 86? Should we take that on notice?
>> notice how many of the the new roles will be permanent positions and how many will be short-term >> um contracts. at last uh Senate estimates I asked about any further job losses that s anticipated. Um, I accept that this is just consultation. Um, but Professor Huntington talked about having to hold space. Um, we had a bit of a back and forth as to what that actually um meant, but did you know that this was on the cards at the last estimates or was this is this a new take that >> new development
>> uh deputy chief executive um uh Senator and I do apologize again if um my choice of attorney phrase was opaque um as Dr. Dr. Hilton said uh we have set ourselves up to be in a position where we have annually a review cycle to look at a look across the entire research portfolio and as Dr. Hilton said um we um would expect that as part of that we would be um there might be some consequential refresh um activities that come off the back of that. So I was speaking in the abstract having um some sense of the annual review cycle not with any particularly pre-cooked perspective in mind
>> and and maybe just senator to put the changes in context you know I think what we are incredibly grateful for from government is the increased funding that means those changes that we implemented over the last 18 months to to save money. the ones we've talked about a lot in this forum are behind us and we're back to a position where we've probably been for the last 20 years where sort of 50 to 100 staff each year are subject to that potential for redundancy and that's the way the organization has for a very long time >> ensured that the skills we have are current contemporary science skills and that hasn't led to a major erosion in um you know in the the type of science we do quite the opposite. It's meant that we have kept contemporary and modern.
And in terms of your um the increases of your costs at SRO, the cost of research, those are the costs. Um I've had many back and forths with minister about um how the government says well more funding than ever to Syra and you know I think your appropriation goes up by 1% a
year. a little over that
>> just just over 1% a year. >> What are the increases in the last 12 months on things like >> I don't know uh IT cyber security uh some of your other costs.
>> So the cyber security one's a really important one and the funding that we received in the budget was to cover that uplift in cyber security and the additional cost of cyber security. So that's part of our sustainability. We we monitor costs pretty carefully. um we can take on notice the the the increase in costs that we found over the last you know perhaps for the last full financial year compared with the one before. It's a little bit hard 3 months into a financial year to be estimating what our costs will be. Um but it's something that I think uh every organization government private sector faces.