More charitable opportunities for science: CSIRO head

"We're having conversations with philanthropists in many different areas at the moment," he told the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday.

"I'm interested in philanthropy. I'm interested in working with businesses. But what I want to do is to have that extra funding laser focused on generating impact."

Dr Hilton noted Australia invested considerably less in research than many other countries - about 1.6 per cent of economic output compared to five per cent of GDP in comparable nations.

The agency had faced a sobering backlog of essential repairs at the end of 2025.

More than 80 per cent of CSIRO's 800 buildings were no longer fit for purpose, he said.

The leadership team had chosen to abandon some areas of science and narrow its focus, rather than run the risk of doing nothing at scale, Dr Hilton said.

"What I'm really convinced about, though, is if we connect with the community, if we explain why science is important, and that that story becomes more compelling ... sometimes, as a research sector broadly, we take our eye off that," he said.

Earlier in 2026 in Senate estimates, CSIRO executives confirmed almost a quarter of remaining job losses would come from a key environmental unit.

Originally, almost half of those jobs were expected to come from the agency's environmental research unit, which includes climate adaption science.

Defending the decision, Dr Hilton said the agency had struck the right balance.

"I'm confident that the modelling capacity, the monitoring capacity, the work we're doing in resilience ... is capable of delivering the sort of advice that Australia needs and the sort of science that Australia needs to navigate the future," he said.

In November, the science agency said up to 350 research positions would be slashed as the "cost of doing science has gone up".

The federal budget, handed down in May, set aside more than $387 million for the CSIRO over the next four years.