KEY POINTS:
Another week, another upset for a twitchy Government - this time a trivial but politically scratchy Iraq kerfuffle. But what of deeper matters?
This is a Government which has claimed to be for the future, not the past, for a more surefooted, more creative people, richer in our carbon-neutral environment, our society and our inner selves.
But you could be forgiven for thinking that ministers rank building prisons for the dregs of past failures more highly than building laboratories to unlock the secrets of future successes.
A major OECD report on innovation, made public today, will say we have good foundations on which to build an escalator to the top half of the rich league. But we are not on the escalator. And among the reasons are that we do not do enough research, science and technology (RST) - which makes this report a must-read for those with a keener interest in their children's dawning future than in their parents' twilight years.
In its eight years, the Government has energetically set up "taskforces" and "working parties" and written "strategies" and "frameworks", but has not dedicated the resources to realise them. Each year, about three times the amount goes into a fund for greedy baby-boomers to tuck into when they turn 65, as goes to research science and technology.
In an economy where the private sector underspends on RST on a share-of-gross domestic product basis compared with other developed economies, the Government also spends under the OECD average (0.52 per cent of GDP against 0.68 per cent in 2006-07). Government spending has fallen in GDP terms these past eight years, although it lifted a little in this year's Budget. The OECD report buries this sad fact on page 78, although there are repeated references to the need for more funding in specific areas, not least the Marsden fund for basic "blue skies" science, which it says is half that of the United States National Science Foundation in share-of-GDP terms.
The report details this economy's advantages and disadvantages, the strengths of the RST system and performance and its weaknesses, threats and opportunities.
The good news is that the OECD researchers find an "innovative people", some "world-class" biotechnology companies and a remarkably high level of scientific articles in terms of population - in the top third globally, although a disproportionately high 60 per cent is in the "social and behavioural sciences" and "engineering, technology and mathematics are under-represented by international standards".
The report also commends a "sound macroeconomic framework and predictable and good business environment" with flexible markets, Government awareness of RST's importance, its "predictable policy environment and competent public administration", "world-class competencies" in research, "competitive natural resource-based sectors" and "pockets of excellence" in software and film.
But it has identified more weaknesses than strengths, among them "shortcomings" in technology "diffusion", low inward flows of new technology, limited outwards foreign direct investment, a "fragmented system of government support", too many public research organisations and "excessive reliance on a few policy principles" inherited from the 1980s economic reforms which has left "truly stable funding exceptionally low".
The Government has made many qualitative improvements, including better long-term funding for Crown Research Institutes to build capacity and continuity, prodding institutions to collaborate and so combat fragmentation, and tax changes to encourage private-sector innovation.
At this evening's "celebrating innovation" launch of the report, ministers will outline funding for climate-change research.
But if the ministers really wanted to focus on grandchildren, not grandparents, they would also be announcing a big quantitative improvement: a strong upward funding path for research, science and technology.
They would also be emulating the Australian Labor Party's policy to pull all innovation-related officialdom into a special department and thereby recast development policy.
That would be future-looking fourth-term stuff. Forget Iraq.
* Professor Keith Jackson died last week. He was one of a very few political scientists in the 1960s - with Bob Chapman, Austin Mitchell and Alan Robinson - who paid attention to actual politics in this small, supposedly dull country. Professor Jackson was always a courteous, helpful and interested friend to journalists who needed local, instead of foreign, analytical tools to explain this country's political habits. He stayed closely interested in real politics long after his "retirement" from Canterbury University. He was the best sort of academic, at home in theory and respectful of evidence.
* ColinJames@synapsis.co.nz
