Public sector cuts: 86 scientists, staff call on minister to intervene in Callaghan Innovation restructure

Lower Hutt-based Callaghan Innovation employs around 382 people, including around 200 scientists and others who wrangle grants and connect businesses with researchers.

Staff at one of New Zealand’s largest research organisations have called on Judith Collins to step in over a wave of job cuts expected to be announced tomorrow.

But there’s no sign the Research, Science and Innovation Minister will intervene in Callaghan Innovation’s “strategic reset”, which staff fear will lead to a “substantial number” of science and engineer roles going.

The Herald understands details of the restructure, which went before the Crown agency’s board last week, will be shared with staff in meetings on Monday.

Lower Hutt-based Callaghan employs around 382 people, including around 200 scientists and others who wrangle grants and connect businesses with researchers.

The Government has asked agencies to cut 6.5 per cent to 7.5 per cent of their costs in a bid to slash overall public service spending by $1.5 billion per year.

Callaghan grants are administered by its monitoring agency, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), which falls in the 7.5 per cent camp, but Callaghan, which has an annual budget of $187 million, has so far not confirmed any savings target.

In a bluntly-written letter to Collins, supported by nearly 90 engineers, scientists and support workers at Callaghan, staff said they were “hugely concerned” over the reset, which they described as a “genuine risk” to the future of science at the agency.

They worried many jobs could go this year and that those remaining would have to focus on commercial revenue “at the effective exclusion of all else”.

“There will be narrower expertise and fewer research teams to carry our overhead costs,” they said.

“We do not see this as a change to a new sustainable science organisation, but rather a first step that will lead to inevitable decline.”

The staffers said the restructure would make it harder to attract and retain staff and for the agency to meet its goals of generating new high-tech businesses.

“We call on the minister to ensure that people are retained in the system, and to save this sector of our science capability from being lost to New Zealand for a generation.”

Collins’ office said in a statement that the minister had seen the letter but considered the matter “operational” and referred the Herald to Callaghan for comment.

Callaghan Innovation chief executive Stefan Korn.

Callaghan chief executive Stefan Korn said the purpose of the reset was to return the agency to its “original function” of delivering commercial science, engineering and innovation support for industry.

“In the immediate and medium term, we need to ensure that Callaghan Innovation is able to deliver its services while ensuring we operate safely and within our existing fiscal envelope.”

Korn said Callaghan’s board and senior leadership were “acutely aware this is a particularly difficult time for many of our people and we are focused on completing the consultation process so that we can give clarity as soon as possible to our people”.

The New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS) has shared its own worries over the reset.

“[Callaghan is] a unique hub and these cuts will cause them to fall below a tipping point where they cease to be viable,” co-president Dr Lucy Stewart said.

“Frankly it appears they already have, but no one is willing to outright say that.”

NZAS co-president Professor Troy Baisden said Callaghan’s problems were “unfortunately representative” of what was happening in the wider research system.

New Zealand Association of Scientists president Professor Troy Baisden.

“We now lack transparent understanding of what research is for and what capability will be lost without ongoing funding,” Baisden said.

“We don’t know where important work is failing because it has half or a quarter of the funding it needs to succeed reliably.

“The current direction seems likely to be to defund many of these areas without transparent prioritisation.”

The association has already voiced concern over sector funding heading off a “fiscal cliff”, with the looming end of the country’s decade-old National Science Challenges and the scrapping of the former Government’s $450m “Science City” plan for Wellington.

That had involved creating three “science hubs”, one of which would have housed a new health and pandemic readiness research project involving Callaghan.

At this point, it’s not clear what will replace the science challenges, with the Government having also cancelled a major reform programme that was to have succeeded them.

Former chief science advisor Professor Sir Peter Gluckman has meanwhile been tasked with chairing separate groups advising on how the science and tertiary sectors can help boost the economy.

Jamie Morton is a specialist in science and environmental reporting. He joined the Herald in 2011 and writes about everything from conservation and climate change to natural hazards and new technology.