Is the CSIRO stuffed?

Andrew Bolt received an interesting e-mail from Art Raiche, former Chief Research Scientist of the CSIRO. Dr Raiche is critical of the CSIRO's GW fear mongering, but what really concerns me is what he says about the CSIRO:

It is my strong belief that CSIRO has passed its use-by date. The organisation that bears the name of CSIRO has very little in common with the organisation that I joined in 1971, one that produced so much of value for Australia during its first seven decades. Of course, one cannot kill off a national icon directly but it can be slowly reduced in size and function. It is anachronistic to have a single organisation operating across so many sectors with sector funding allocations left in the hands of CSIRO’s incompetent management. I suggest that that many of its divisions should be excised with the funding of these divisions to be used to relocate its more competent scientists into relevant universities or government departments. In particular, I suggest excising divisions associated with minerals, IT, human nutrition and medicine because these are largely irrelevant to and lacking the competence of their industry sectors.......

Sadly, over the last decade, CSIRO has transformed itself from a once-respected research institute into a highly centralised, government enterprise (oxymoron?), replete with intersecting layers of expensive management, focused on continual reorganisation. Scientific independence has been lost, with scientists reduced to the status of process workers. Initiative is still permitted provided that it can pass through a complex set of business criteria set by managers who, for the most part, would lack the competence to hold similar jobs in private industry ......

If true (and I have no way to assess his comment) its terrible to see such an Australian institution decay to this level.