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June 15, 2003
The new CSIRO
I had an old copy of The Age (Friday June 6 2003) on the floor near my desk. Glancing through it I noticed (p.8) that CSIRO has lost money from investment ($75m) in the collapse of the Australian Magnesium Corp (AMC) proposed magnesium smelter at Stanwell in Queensland. That collapse meant that CSIRO has also missed out on much needed potential revenue.
The CSIRO is no longer engaged in conducting good public research. It is well on the way to becoming a technoscience corporation that makes money from stragetic investments in its flagships programs. In the new CSIRO science is the motor of economic development and the flagship programs are research startups that make a profit by linking their research to commercial applications. Hence we have CSIRO investing in magnesium smelters.
Update
Despite the collapse of the AMC magnesium smelter it appears that Magnesium International's magnesium smelter at Port Pirie in SA (the SAMAG plant) is going ahead with government backing and without CSIRO. You never hear anything about the environmental implications of the SAMAG plant though. Just lots of stuff like this
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at June 15, 2003 02:47 PM
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Comments
when you have a government that doesn't give a fig about publically funded scientific research for the greater good, how else are orgs like the CSIRO to survive?
Posted by: Niall at June 15, 2003 08:54 PM