A huge and building sense of expectancy, the excitement and disbelief when the big day finally arrived, the let-down when what was under the tree for you were soft packages bearing clothes, or what you had most yearned for ended up broken or boring after a couple of days. Often throughout life that seesaw of anticipation and anti-climax returns again.
And so it feels with the long- and eagerly-awaited reforms of our public science sector, finally announced on Thursday by just-departed Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins.
Some of the changes have merit. They would be even better if there were extra funding to boost their resources. However, the interminable time to get to this point has removed much of the shine off the result.
It has taken many years to get here. Significant issues have been signalled with the sector for a decade or more. Several years of work, and the thoughts and ideas of hundreds of researchers and others, then went into a Labour government green paper and a white paper, Te Ara Paerangi, which was scrapped unceremoniously early last year by Ms Collins.
Instead, she set up reviews of the science and university sectors, led by former prime minister’s chief science adviser Sir Peter Gluckman.
There have been some concerns at delays in releasing the findings of the science review panel. But eventually this week, tied in with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s State of the Nation address and all the economic visions that drive this government, Ms Collins unleashed — to use a word the prime minister has uttered a lot so far this year — enormous changes which will have far-reaching consequences for science agencies and the nation’s scientists.
The creaking, competing Crown research institutes set up in another world in 1992 have run their course. The decision has finally been made to give them a desperately needed overhaul to reset their priorities and send them off on new directions.
A new "advanced technology" PRO will be set up, which will research and generate commercial benefits in fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing and synthetic biology.
Ironically, Callaghan Innovation, set up in 2013 by the John Key National government to foster research and commercialise great scientific ideas, will be closed because, Ms Collins says, it was "spread too thinly" and had been over-reliant on Crown funding.
Instead, a PM’s science, innovation and technology council will provide direction and oversight of the sector. The council’s parameters are all about using science to drive economic growth, alignment with the economic strategy and ensuring the system focuses on economic outcomes.
Feedback from the sector on the reforms has been mixed but generally on the negative side and pointing out the necessity of properly thought out and implemented change.
NZ Association of Scientists co-president Troy Baisden says the changes are "not individually without merit", coming after the "most destructive year" for the sector in decades. However, the focus on commercialisation won’t work with falling levels of public investment, he says.
Despite the announcement, there remain ongoing concerns about no more funding, about looming redundancies and the loss of science capability and expertise, about the inability to attract scientists from overseas, about no clear career paths for young researchers.
Yes, coming up with something other than the ageing CRIs is long overdue.
But scientists should not be viewed by the government’s economic zealots as just economic units or cash cows. Prof Baisden is right in warning that the government is focusing on mirages of investment and economic benefit and needs to put more into the sector to support world-class research already being done on tiny budgets.
