Just months after slashing funding and cutting hundreds of climate jobs, Australia is doing an about-face on its climate change policy, Thomson Reuters Foundation News reports. Australia’s re-elected conservative government is reinstating climate science as the bedrock of its peak science body, Thomson Reuters explains.

“It’s a new government and we’re laying out a direction that climate science matters,” new Science Minister Greg Hunt told Australian radio on Thursday.

In February, hundreds were laid off from the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) climate change division after budget cuts were made by the previous Australian prime minister (and climate change skeptic) Tony Abbott. In July, Malcolm Turnbull, a climate champion who toppled Abbott in a party-room coup in late 2015, was elected as the new prime minister of Australia.

Hunt said the new policy will mean 15 new climate science jobs and research investment worth A$37 million ($28.08 million) over 10 years, but scientists and climate change advocates remain only cautiously optimistic.

Image: A woman in Melbourne, Australia holds a sign calling for “Climate Action Now” during the 2014 People’s Climate March | Image Credit: Takver/Flickr