The ‘efficiency dividend’ in combination with projected falls in external revenue next year, is estimated to result in a reduction of 116 staff across CSIRO in 2012-13. The Staff Association met with Deputy CEO Craig Roy this morning, who indicated that CSIRO will endeavour to use natural attrition to manage the staffing reduction. The Staff Association is absolutely committed to keeping the number of involuntary redundancies in CSIRO to a minimum. We will work will members to ensure redundancy and redeployment processes are followed and all opportunities for voluntary redundancy substitution are identified.The Budget was positive in terms of boosting funding for maths and science education, which was highlighted in the media release from Science and Technology Australia (here). More details can be found in the portfolio budgets statements for the Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education portfolio (here).

Overall, the Federal Budget, as well as recent State Budgets, are missing opportunities to invest in Government science, not the least to ensure that Australia can support science careers, but also to generate industries and jobs for an innovation-based economy in the future. The Staff Association will continue to actively engage with all policymakers to emphasise this point.

Members should be aware that the allocation of revenue from the recent Wireless LAN patent case has not been determined as yet. Minister Evans has already indicated that the revenue will likely be split with Government, with the possible allocation of $110M to CSIRO. The Staff Association has previously released a statement on this matter (here).

Related links:

From ABC Online Budget: Science spared but concerns remain (Sam Popovski, CSIRO Staff Association quoted)

From The Conversation Efficiency tax will stifle scienctific work at CSIRO (Michael Borgas, CSIRO Staff Association quoted)

From The Canberra Times CSIRO pursues Acton precinct (Sam Popovski, CSIRO Staff Association quoted)

From ABC Radio National Maths and Science Education (Prof Ian Chubb, Australia’s Chief Scientist)

If you have any questions, please contact us at csstaff@cpsu.org.au

Annabel Crabb

Annabel Crabb pays tribute to CSIRO’s WiFi patent win and praises a slew of other home-grown, sometimes obscure, inventions.

I AM ASHAMED to say that I did not know, until the reporting of this month’s international patent settlement, that the CSIRO had actually invented wireless technology – known as wi-fi – in 1992.

Wi-fi makes so much possible.

Working from the bath, for example.

The theft of one’s personal details by that Google truck chugging past. Hideous insights into the proclivities of complete strangers (and here I direct a long, stern stare at the person living near my train line who has a wi-fi network called ”Rapedungeon”; I presume you know who you are). The continuing commercial viability of luxury hotels, whose ability to gouge customers on phone calls – tragically undermined by the advent of the mobile phone – has been happily superseded by their new ability to charge $28 a day for wi-fi.

And after an extremely lengthy and complex legal proceeding, the CSIRO has emerged with a total of $425 million in patent royalties for its invention, from various US companies.

The litigation has set off all sorts of whining in the US, where various technology types accuse the CSIRO of being a greedy ”patent troll”.

Well, America: suck it up.

You want to complain about profiteering on intellectual property rights? How about you try a continent of people who haven’t been paying for Microsoft Word all these years? And anyway, the truth is that Australia – and this is a fact largely obscured by our comfortable national self-identification as a continent of dunderplunkens – has a fabulously eclectic, valuable, under-capitalised and definitely under-reported history of invention and innovation.

We all know about the bionic ear, penicillin, the stump-jump plough, the Hills Hoist, Vegemite and so on.

But did you know that Australians invented the notepad?

And the feature film? And the electric drill? And pre-paid postage? And the permanent crease for woollen trouser fabric (a CSIRO innovation without which the Mad Men series would be nothing)? And 1970s wedding presents would never have been the same without the Splayd, invented by William McArthur in 1946.

And 1980s music … well. As much as anyone can be blamed for it, the Sydney inventors of the digital sampling synthesiser, Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie, are your men in this case.

Part of our problem seems, historically, to have been that Australian inventions, for reasons of geographical isolation, or the unassuming nature of their inventors, have gone unacknowledged or been pipped at the post.

Just ask Lancelot de Mole, the South Australian who invented the armoured tank in 1912 and tried patiently to give the idea to the British Army, which filed his letter away and only found it after World War I had ended, whereupon it made de Mole an honorary corporal and paid him £987.

Or Henry Sutton, who came within a bee’s dick of inventing the television, only his was called the ”Telephane” and used telegraph wires to beam images of the 1885 Melbourne Cup to his house in Ballarat. Sutton, terminally unlucky, also recorded his successful construction of a light bulb on January 6, 1880 – 16 days after Thomas Edison.

Or Lawrence Hargrave, whose dogged work on aeronautics, box kites and wing design won him several minutes of exhilaration on a Wollongong beach in 1894 when he lashed four kites together and flew aboard them, five metres in the air.

Unlike the Wright brothers, who undertook the world’s first manned, powered, controlled flight nine years later and then spent the next decade suing the pants off anyone else who gave it a shot, Hargrave refused to patent his ideas.

”Workers must root out the idea that by keeping the results of their labours to themselves, a fortune will be assured to them,” he wrote, maintaining that the dream of flight was a collective human aspiration, rather than a business proposition.

Sometimes, Australian inventors have just not thought to commercialise their work.

Like the CSIRO’s Doug Waterhouse, who in 1963 came up with a fly repellent formula and respectfully delivered a sample for use by Queen Elizabeth on her visit to Australia that year.

Upon subsequently receiving a call from a representative of the Mortein company, Waterhouse handed over the formula for Aerogard, no strings attached.

In happy penury he joins Frank Bannigan, who invented the electrical powerboard for Kambrook in 1972 but failed to patent it, forgoing the staggering royalties that might otherwise have been payable on this international household item.

And what about Maria Ann ”Granny” Smith, the Sydney orchardist who, in 1868, developed the apple that still bears her name? She did not get a bean, though the late Steve Jobs was to wage a mighty and expensive war with the Beatles’ record label, Apple Corps, over the right to use the band’s famous record logo, a halved Granny Smith.

So I’m not too bothered about the CSIRO extracting a bit of baksheesh for wi-fi. Call it payback for the Granny Smith and trouser pleats.

Annabel Crabb writes for ABC Online’s The Drum, and tweets as @annabelcrabb.

This article was originally published in The Sun Herald. 

Background

CSIRO has undertaken a review of its Records Services function and determined that approximately seven officers are likely to become redundant. They have however stated that all twenty-eight operative staff across three classification levels (CSOF 2, 3 and 4) are potentially redundant and wish to move to a totally different organisational structure from 1 May 2012.

The CSIRO Staff Association believes CSIRO are acting inconsistently with the provisions of the following sections of Schedule 3 – Redeployment and Retrenchment of the Agreement. Specifically:

• Clause 3(a). Consultation. CSIRO has not provided in writing the level, functional area or location of potentially redundant officers
• Consequently options and measures to reduce the need for, and mitigate the impact of, redundancies have not been able to be fully explored – Clause 3 (b)
• Officers have also not been notified of their right to request the involvement and assistance of a representative in accordance with clause 3 (c)
• Clause 4 of the Redeployment and Redundancy process (Voluntary Redundancy Substitution) has not been completed prior to assessment of staff against organisational requirements – clause 5(b)
• Clause 5(b) is also not being conducted correctly as staff are being assessed against future not current roles

In addition the CSIRO Staff Association believes CSIRO are acting inconsistently with clause 14 of the agreement – Work Classification Standards. Specifically:

• The proposed classification of a number of positions in the new organisational structure in Records Services are not consistent with the Work Classification Standards which derive from the Classification Level Descriptors that appear in schedule 6 of the agreement

In accordance with Clause 87 c of the agreement the Staff Association requests a meeting with relevant management in order to try and resolve this dispute. The Staff Association notes that if this is unsuccessful the matter may be referred to Fair Work Australia.

More information

Contact Paul Girdler on (03) 8620 6348 or email paul.girdler@cpsu.org.au

Australia loves its sport champions, actors and writers. But we rarely sing the praises of our scientific innovators.

Yet Australia is amongst the world leaders in medical science and astronomy just to name a few.

Australian scientists invented our indestructible dollar bills, the iconic Aeroguard, the bionic ear, and the life changing wi-fi technology used in computers around the world.

Funding for science is well below the OECD average and with growing international competition Australia stands to fall further behind the pack.

What’s your view on the current state of science funding? Is there enough recognition of the value that science contributes to Australian society? 

Have your say by posting a comment below. 

As Anna Maria Arabia, the CEO of Science & Technology Australia tells 3Q’s Sarah Macdonald, Australian innovation will not reach its full potential if we don’t adequately invest in the development and commercialisation of Australia’s world class research.

Anna-Maria explains that rather than boosting innovation and entrepreneurial activity one of the key government programs that supports early stage venture capital is drawing to a close.

She also tells 3Q about a recent summit that brought together the superannuation industry and the science sector to investigate potential investment opportunities to support Australian innovation.

About 3Q – Questions that Count

3Q is a panel based talk-show produced by Essential Vision.  3Q aims to foster intelligent, but not too earnest, discussion from people who know their stuff.

More information here.