The decision to axe up to 43 jobs at AgResearch, the Government's biggest state science company, will hamper future growth in the most productive parts of New Zealand's economy, says former agriculture minister Jim Anderton.
Redundancies were a direct result of the Government's "anti-science" policies, he said.
"Future prosperity and jobs depend on science and innovation, and the sector where innovation and science makes the most difference in New Zealand is the primary sector," he said.
Instead, the Government was "hacking off" more than 40 jobs, mainly in meat and wool research.
AgResearch said yesterday it expected to make the scientists and technicians redundant next month, mainly because farmers were not funding wool research and long-term studies in the meat sector.
But the Public Service Association (PSA) said the announcement was at odds with Prime Minister John Key's statement last month that public science should be a priority for the Government, regarded not as a cost but as an investment for future growth.
"If AgResearch is not safe from the Government's scalpel, what hope is there for the rest of science in New Zealand and for our highly-skilled and internationally sought-after scientists?" said PSA national secretary Richard Wagstaff.
"The Government must act to retain these AgResearch scientists because other countries will be only too keen to employ them," Mr Wagstaff said. "What a huge loss that would be to New Zealand."
Mr Anderton said that the Government was "coasting" when it axed his $700 million Fast Forward primary sector and innovation fund after the general election, "but this is actually going backwards".
The Fast Forward funding was to work in partnership with the private sector and with agencies such as AgResearch to speed up economic development, but the lull in the subsequent 18 months was one reason demand for AgResearch's long-term research and development was falling.
"Farmers won't carry all the costs on their own back," said Mr Anderton. "They need a commitment from Government as well."
Woolgrowers voted away their collective access to research and development in a referendum on industry levies last August, a move AgResearch chief executive Andrew West blamed on too many small sheepfarmers voting against paying a levy.
"If we want our red meat and wool industries to be more than a cottage representation in the future then we need to amend the Commodity Levy Act so that the vote is taken on stock units alone," he said at the time.
The levy of 4c/kg, reducing later to 3c/kg on each sheep would have provided $6.4m of funding for industry board Meat and Wool NZ -- and it had planned to pick up another $5m of taxpayer funding to match research spending.
Dr West said that fewer than 40 percent of the nation's sheep farmers voted down the levy, and many of those were people with small flocks.
Today, he said: "Let's be honest about this, if farmers thought that research and development was important in wool, they'd have funded it.
"If the members of that industry choose not to invest in science then there is a knock-on consequence.
"Why should the taxpayer be expected to pick up the slack?"
Dr West is due to resign in June after six years as chief executive.
He recently complained the company was having to work in other countries to meet Government demands for a 9 percent dividend, at the same time as the Government was cutting funding for pastoral science by 7 percent and greenhouse gas research by 15 percent.
