Science funding

One of the Prime Minister's six "visions" for New Zealand's long-term future enunciated in his statement at the beginning of this parliamentary year was the encouragement of innovation.

It made a striking contrast to his pre-election explanation of how National's first tranche of tax cuts would be funded, a large sum coming from abandoning the Clark government's $700 million research and development subsidy.

The subsidy, called Fast Forward, was intended to link the private sector with our major centres of science research, including AgResearch, the biggest state science company, to bolster economic development with some security for long-term research.

John Key's words are hollow if the economy's innovative development is to rely, as it must, on technical innovation and scientific progress.

Both have been the backbone of New Zealand's international reputation as a progressive nation.

The evidence is beginning to show a very different future for science and innovation.

Apart from cancelling Fast Forward, the Government has cut funding for pastoral science by 7% and greenhouse gas research by 15%, scientists claim.

The case of AgResearch is particularly worrying.

This organisation was restructured as a "company" and required to meet a Government demand for a 9% dividend.

That burden, when coupled with the foolish and short-sighted decision by woolgrowers to vote away their collective access to research and development in a referendum on industry levies, has placed great pressure on the company to cut costs.

That will result in the loss of up to 43 jobs, including several at Invermay, of technicians and scientists who will find it very difficult to obtain similar employment in this country and will, most likely, have to seek it overseas - joining the large numbers of highly skilled New Zealanders who have migrated.

Few would disagree with the University of Otago's vice-chancellor, Professor Sir David Skegg, who noted recently that if the Government wanted to transform the economy, investing in higher education should be a priority, as education and research were key to a prosperous future.

But the facts speak for themselves.

The percentage of gross domestic product invested in research is well below the OECD average - the organisation has determined that New Zealand's total research and development "intensity" (the ratio of of gross spending on R and D to GDP) was 1.14%, about half the OECD average.

The level of research investment by the private sector is particularly low.

The report by the Crown Research Institute Taskforce, published last month, underlined emphatically some of the key problems the Government must address: it was not clear if a CRI's objective "is to create value for itself, as a company, or to generate value for New Zealand"; current ownership arrangements seemed to place "undue emphasis on research and development that produces outputs that individual CRIs can capture in their statements of revenue and balance sheets, rather than on research that contributes to the wellbeing and prosperity of New Zealand"; there were "multiple lines of accountability that dilute the CRIs' sense of purpose and direction"; and most tellingly, "CRIs are heavily dependent on competitive contracts, which are often short-term relative to the time frame in which science produces results.

This makes it difficult for CRIs to operate strategically".

The Government appears to have accepted the taskforce's recommendations of a better balance for the focus of research and the contestability for funding, and should waste little time implementing them.

But, given the pressures being placed on all scientific and tertiary institutions by the Budget obligation to make politically desirable tax cuts, will it be too little, too late?

As recently as last week, Prime Minister Key stated that science and innovation would be a priority for new government spending and more would be said about it in the Budget.

"Science and innovation are important.

They're one of the keys to growing our economy, raising wages, and providing the world-class public services that Kiwi families need.

I'm determined to make New Zealand science more effective," and "New Zealand is a leader in agricultural science . . . we have a great opportunity to pool our expertise with other countries and help feed the world's growing population - while tackling carbon emissions."

Scientists, researchers and technical staff throughout the country wondering where the redundancy axe will fall next must be concerned about the gap between the optimistic rhetoric and their worrying reality.