Australia's nurseries of thought being crushed by constant cuts Elizabeth Farrelly The National Art School is housed in the historic Darlinghurst Gaol, one of Australia's most glorious architectural treasures.
O ne art school? Vanishing climate science? A disappeared government architect? Defunded public history? This is not just a few random cuts. After the corporatisation of our education system comes this wholesale attack on knowledge and creativity; a dismantling of institutions, a burning of books.
Of course, book burning is useful for governments with oligarchic tendencies. In any takeover, demoralising the intellectuals is a first and critical step. What's bizarre is the extent to which Australians have drunk the two-part neo-con instrumentalist Kool-Aid that makes this possible. 
Part one: that only profit-making enterprises are valuable. Part two: that in apportioning scarce public funding, these profit-makers should get the lion's share.
So we pour public billions into private enterprises that deliver little or no public benefit and should anyway be able to stand alone - $500 million to pipe Murray water to Broken Hill cotton farmers; $17 billion to a dirty private tollway; $4 billion a year subsidising the mining industry; $2 billion a year to resource-rich private schools.
Corporate tax reductions that will deliver most benefit overseas.
Yet we starve the institutions on which our culture, our global standing and perhaps our survival depends; the nurseries of thought.
Public science. Arts. History. Public architecture.
It matters, and not only to scientists and creatives. These are our thought leaders. Without them, Malcolm Turnbull's talk of innovation is meaningless. Our culture will be the dumb husk of wealth without substance, and maybe not even that.
The sacking of 130 CSIRO climate scientists is not principally about jobs, or even climate - though these are clearly important. It's principally about truth. And not even in the usual way of government bluster and obfuscation. This is far more dangerous: a refusal to know.
The CSIRO is a century-old institution globally admired for its long and distinguished research record, especially in the atmospheric sciences - its ice-core library, its monitoring of the ultra-pristine air at Cape Grim, where it has built data sets of extraordinary accuracy and longevity.
Many call this "public-good science", as though there's some other sort. Some call it basic science.
I call it true science, or truth science.
Or, science.
The departure from such open- ended curiosity-led science towards Turnbull's utilitarian "innovation and growth" agenda is deliberate. CSIRO chief Dr Larry Marshall, a former Silicon Valley venture capitalist who (staff say) rarely uses the word science, argues for "impact".
You might think extreme weather and sea-level rise qualify as impact.
But Marshall says that since we now know climate change is real, the scientists who study it are redundant.
(Notice how we slid straight from denial to adaptation there, without a moment between?)
There's no logic here. You don't stop studying a disease because you know you have it.
It's really about the neo-con belief that science - everything - should make money.
Public good science may make someone rich, a century hence, or not. It may tell us about survival. It may fail. That's the nature of experiment.
Science that shapes itself to a desired outcome is as different from true science as journalism from PR; seeking profit, not truth.
The CSIRO lost me years back when it took money from agribusiness' biggest enviro-bully Monsanto for joint projects on GM seeds and crops. That was ugly enough. But the scientists being sacked now are not these managerial go-for-the-money guys.
They're the truth-seekers down in cattle class. The soothsayers.
When they go, the data sets they gather will be ungathered. No one will model changes to our sea and land and climate.
Once you stop collecting this stuff, once you lose the skills and the culture, that's it. You can't go back and fill in the gaps. It's done.
That's one reason self-respecting organisations don't just sack scholars of global stature. The other, says UNSW (and ex-Scripps Institute) Climate Research Professor Steven Sherwood, is that "it ruins their reputation". Everyone knows.
Already, 2500 international scientists and dozens of institutions have pleaded with CSIRO to reinstate the scientists. Already, says Sherwood, international scholars are shunning us. This is not good.
The trashing of Sydney's revered art nurseries will be no less damaging. Sydney has three main art schools, each with its own flavour: the National Art School is known for its atelier-type, skill-based teaching; University of Sydney's Sydney College of the Arts, which for the past 20-odd years has occupied the magnificent Kirkbride asylum at Callan Park; and UNSW's Art and Design (formerly COFA), seen as the most theoretical but also most "applied" of the three.
With NSW TAFE Art and Design already slaughtered, this reduction is huge. In fine arts especially, diversity is key. Students are rightly furious.
We need artists. They supply our raw culture. But even in money terms, they're valuable. But there's a catch, or two. The NAS occupies one of Australia's most glorious architectural treasures, the old Darlinghurst Gaol. SCA's home, Callan Park, is a gorgeous waterside acreage, lustily eyed by developers.
Both were saved, 20 years ago, by prolonged and passionate protest.
This time, the forces of darkness got tricky. As with the CSIRO, they undermined from within. In a deal clearly strategised over many months, they've induced the schools themselves to volunteer to merge.
First, the SCA was suddenly absorbed into UNSW, fait accompli, with SCA Dean Colin Rhodes arguing for a "single hub of global excellence" - as though fine arts were some geeky garage-bound high-tech start-up for autistic screen-teens. Exactly a week later we hear NAS might also merge.
The subtext? Done deal.
And that's before we even get to defunding the National Library's fabulous Trove and the "voluntary" reduction of the 200-year-old NSW Government Architect's office from 240 active designers to three advisory lapdogs.
Century-old institutions are like century-old fig trees. They don't make money, they make life. And they don't just reboot. When they're gone, they're gone.
Twitter: @emfarrelly