Helen Clark: Catching the Knowledge Wave

Speech by the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Helen Clark, at the launch of the Catching the Knowledge Wave project, University of Auckland Alumni Dinner.

Thank you Hine, Parliamentary Colleagues, Dr Hood - Vice Chancellor of the University and President of the Alumni Association, members and friends of the University.

Thank you for the invitation to address the dinner tonight, 10 years is a significant anniversary. I seem to recall addressing an Alumni Association dinner in the Ellerslie Racecourse about 5 years ago. That evening I was the off-course substitute for David Lange who reported in sick, so I am here tonight on the 10th anniversary in my own right.

When the invitation was first explored with me, the suggestion was that I should give a state of the nation address. I was mindful at that time, that earlier in this particular week I would have to deliver a major prelection in parliament in the form of a prime ministers statement, so I thought that delivering another major prelection this week would be one too many. But meantime there were other parallel discussions going on with the University of Auckland. Some months ago John Hood explored with me whether the Government might be interested in collaborating with the university in organising a conference of future directions for New Zealand. I said that we certainly would be and then promptly delegated the liaison to the Minister of Research, Science and Technology, because I find as Prime Minister, you never survive unless you delegate very quickly, and as much as you can.

But what began as an idea, which John raised with me, has developed into a much larger process and this evening at this Alumni Dinner, both he and I are going to talk a little about that, because we are launching what has been called the "Catching the Knowledge Wave" project. A project which aims to involve a broad cross section of the community in informed debate about future directions for New Zealand. The aim being to lift our sites above the stale and often sterile restatements of fixed positions and look in fresh eyes at the kind of society we wish to create and live in.

The highlight of the project will be the international conference to be held here between the 1st and the 3rd of August. But leading up to that conference is a process of engagement which sees the development of the core theme papers, the preliminary workshops, the establishment of the interactive Website for public engagement and comment. The core concept behind the Knowledge Wave project is that the accelerating pursuit of knowledge is a defining characteristic in the social and economic development of successful countries.

So, the questions the project seeks to answer are: How does New Zealand best ride that knowledge wave and can we develop a broader national understanding of what the issues are for us and a consensus about the future directions? Dr Hood and I, being optimists, believe that we can. For that reason the organisation of the conference is bi-partisan. The Hon. Pete Hodgson represents the Government and the Hon. Maurice Williamson represents the opposition on the organising group.

The project is seeking the involvement of business, of leaders in higher education and research, of major media, of Maori, of community organisations, of the Trade Unions, really of all who want to contribute to lifting New Zealand's sights and performance. The Government will be engaging fully in the debate and welcomes the opportunity to share the ideas it has and to contribute to the building of the consensus about where we go as a country.

Our own thinking and planning about what has to be done was set out in a statement I made to Parliament on Tuesday. I think most of us in this room have long been acutely aware that New Zealand has not been keeping up with the development of other 1st world nations. The reasons are pretty obvious. While others have been fast transforming their economies and societies through knowledge and innovation, we haven't been fast enough. Our export profile resembles that of a developing country, not a developed one and that is a big reason why relative to other advanced nations, we have slipped down the rankings. I do think, also, that our country did go out on a limb, in hands-off approach to policy, leaving the state unable to give effective leadership in economic development and also not in a position to make sufficient investment in economic and social development. So we have quite a lot of ground to make up.

Right now, fortunately, New Zealand is not in economic difficulty. Indeed all the indicators are generally encouraging, and the general level of confidence is good. But on too many occasions of the past 40 or so years, the underlying structural weaknesses of the New Zealand economy have been sorely exposed. We have a breathing space and an opportunity now, to make changes for the long-term, which make us less vulnerable and enable us to offer a decent standard of living to all our people.

In a nutshell, the Government believes that New Zealand's economy and society must be driven far more by knowledge, skill, technology and innovation and we have been looking across Government to see how all policies could contribute to that end. Obviously education is critical. By addressing the worst features of the student loan scheme and stabilising tertiary fees this year as we have, we aim to improve access. But there is so much more to be done and we will have to invest more as fast as we have the capacity to do so.

We also want an end to the rather destructive competition in the tertiary sector, which has seen the resources spread far too thinly at a cost to the quality of education. There will be moves this year to set in place funding structures to support the development of centers of excellence in the tertiary sector. We do see the tertiary sector and the Crown Research Institutes having a major role to play in developing a stronger national innovation system. There should be new initiatives in this year's budget for incubator support for small start-up companies, for seed capital and venture capital to support the commercialisation of new technologies in New Zealand. There is huge potential for economic benefit in the research being carried out in our universities and Crown Research Institutes, but traditionally our country has not had in place the policies needed to ensure that our nation benefits from it.

In our first budget we did increase funding for Science, Research and Technology by 10% with half the increase going out to the private sector. This year's project is to determine how the tax system should treat R & D expenditure. The question being, how to expand it genuinely so that it grows the cake rather than merely eroding the tax base. We do have a constructive discussion going on with business about that.

In other initiatives to promote growth and innovation and confidence, we are making immigration policy much more responsive to labour market needs, we are working with some success to solicit more high value investment in New Zealand and awarding enterprise grants to small innovative companies to give them a chance to grow.

We have taken a leadership role in promoting e-commerce and we have a very big job ahead of us to re-write legislation to keep up with new technology. For example, only this year will a new law be passed to deal effectively with computer hacking. Computer hacking has been going on for rather a long time.

Overall, the aim is to build an economy which is less dependent, year in year out, on good commodity prices, good weather and a low dollar and more driven by innovation and the production of high value goods and services.

Along side that aim is the parallel objective of seeing that across our communities, all groups have the opportunity to reach their full potential and that all can enjoy a level of security through life which citizens of a 1st world nation are entitled to expect.

So, while the Government has objectives and it has plans and it is implementing policies, we never pretend to have all the answers, nor indeed a monopoly on wisdom. For that reason, we are enthusiastically behind the Knowledge Wave project, because it will encourage informed debate, it will address the real issues, not the phony ones and it has the potential to develop a broad consensus about the way ahead for New Zealand.

On that basis I personally, and the Government as a whole, throw our weight behind the Knowledge Wave project and I take great pleasure in being able to launch it in the company of Dr John Hood this evening.

Thank You.