From "CSIRO research for Australia" (1962) pdf page 64:
"The use of mathematical statistics in the planning of experiments and the analysis of their results is found in almost every field of modern science. Within ten years of the founding of C.S.I.R. a small service group, known as the Biometry Section, was set up. Its staff gave assistance to any of the Council's officers who required statistical help and advice in their work.

lnevitably, as the Organization began to grow, the demands on the Section increased. In 1940 a headquarters laboratory was established in Melbourne and Dr. E. A. Cornish (the present Chief of the Division of Mathematical Statistics) became leader of the group. In November, 1944, the University of Adelaide, which was anxious to promote a close liaison between the Section and its own Department of Mathematics, offered to house the Section in its grounds. Ever since then the group has been closely associated with the University, and Dr. Cornish now combines the office of Professor of Mathematical Statistics with his C.S.I.R.O. post.

The Section of Mathematical Statistics became a Division of C.S.I.R.O. in 1954. Nowadays the Division has officers stationed at Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Perth and Armidale, N.S.W., contributing through their statistical knowledge to many different research programmes. In addition, the Division has developed a number of fundamental research interests of its own, particularly in theoretical and meteorological statistics and in the expanding field of digital computing."