Director's Message

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue9 1–31 October 2020

As I write this (on 6 October) the ANU budget for 2021 is beginning to take its final shape. You will have heard what Brian Schmidt has said about the financial challenges facing the University in the coming year and the constraints and changes this will necessarily mean. The consultation period for the University's change plan has now ended and ANU Council met last Friday to approve the University's budget. Unless there are significant surprises for the university sector in tonight's Federal budget, the University budget will shortly flow down through the Colleges to Schools, so RSAA should soon have final figures for planning 2021. There will be significant reductions to the School's recurrent budget, although (unlike the 2020 Expenditure Control Framework) we will generally be able to spend grant, contract and endowment funds as required. I will keep you informed of the School's plans and any proposed changes as soon as I am able to. Although the year ahead will be difficult, I believe RSAA is in good shape to mitigate and manage the challenges that we face.

The rain that is falling this week is good news for another challenge that Stromlo and Siding Spring face every year - the annual bushfire season. Although climate change is leading to more extreme bushfires, the current La Nina weather cycle may give south-eastern Australia a break this coming season. Nonetheless, we need to be prepared, and that means practicing what to do in case a bushfire threatens one of our sites. Our primary safety measure in those circumstances is evacuation - we plan to get everyone off our sites as soon there is any realistic threat. To test our readiness, in the next couple of weeks we will be having a site evacuation drill at Mount Stromlo. Everyone needs to treat this drill as if it were a real evacuation: quickly and carefully evacuate the buildings, gather at the assembly area, follow instructions from wardens, and help each other find transport - the only thing we won't be doing for real is driving down off the mountain. So, please read the information circulated by email after the bushfire briefing (linked here in this newsletter) and be ready to act.

Matthew