The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) last week unveiled the 11-member independent panel it had appointed to advise Cabinet on the country’s top research priorities. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) last week unveiled the 11-member independent panel it had appointed to advise Cabinet on the country’s top research priorities. Photo / Mark Mitchell
A national scientists’ association is challenging the Government’s selection of a high-powered panel to help shape New Zealand’s future research focus, saying it “represents a waste of great talent and mana”.
The independent panel will be led by former governor-general, high commissioner to the UK and NZ Defence Force chief Sir Jerry Mateparae, who currently chairs the Healthier Lives National Science Challenge.
Other prominent names include the University of Auckland’s Distinguished Professor Dame Jane Harding and Associate Professor Yvonne Underhill-Sem; noted Māori scholar Distinguished Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith; LanzaTech founder Dr Sean Simpson; former Lehman Brothers investment banker Ian Short and Massey University chancellor Michael Ahie.
It also features Hōne McGregor, a former Forest & Bird chief executive who chairs the Our Land Our Water National Science Challenge and serves on the World Economic Forum’s Steering Committee; Professor Teck Seng Low, who recently headed Singapore’s National Research Foundation; and Charlotte Walshe, a former director of NZ Trade and Enterprise and chief executive of tech company Jade Software.
For that multi-year reform, called Te Ara Paerangi Future Pathways, the priorities recommended by the panel would form a “central part”, said MBIE’s general manager for future research systems, Prue Williams.
They’d focus Government funding for research on the “the most important social, environmental, health and economic issues and opportunities” for the country.
The panel would act above sector and industry interests and had “strong leadership skills and a strategic, independent and whole-of-New Zealand perspective”, Williams said.
“Collectively, the members have a deep understanding of the New Zealand context and Te Tiriti o Waitangi, as well as the ability to draw from vast international experiences.”
However, the Government’s pick of panelists has been met with criticism by the NZ Association of Scientists, whose co-president Professor Troy Baisden said it “misses the mark”.
“This represents a waste of great talent and mana, trying to build on broken foundations.”
Baisden said the panel’s eminent scientists, innovators and Māori and Pacific leaders were well-suited to “govern equitably” in innovation in health, technology and society.
“However, they lack the economic and environmental expertise needed to give the public – and the governments they elect – confidence in managing responses to challenges such as climate change and natural hazards.
“Connecting innovation and better including Māori is essential, but cannot succeed without understanding the challenges faced by the only developed nation dependent on exporting primary products, as well as managing unique biodiversity and connections to the Southern Ocean in the face of climate change and other threats.”
Baisden pointed to four focus areas bullet-pointed in a 2021 Cabinet paper introducing Te Ara Paerangi, one of which was environmental challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss and water and land use.
NZ Association of Scientists co-president Professor Troy Baisden.
Further, he said, the association felt the panel lacked “sufficient connections” to the country’s institutions and early career researchers, “to understand the deep cracks and dysfunction that continue to grow in our research system”.
“Our university sector is in crisis.”
Across all institutions, Baisden said, careers and research had been disrupted as healthy funding contests had evolved into “hyper-competition and capricious layers of management seeking ever-greater funding, with less time and resource for research”.
While the association had been looking forward to progress on the research priorities and the panel’s announcement, Baisden said it now doubted the panel process could lead a strong case for public investment that was compelling or achievable.
“Wider discussion is needed on how the intent and promise of Te Ara Paerangi Future can be restored,” he said.
“Immediate focus should be on stabilising careers, important work, and mechanisms for achieving excellence that are starving – forcing our best scientists to make excruciating choices between unpaid overtime and crippling cuts.”
Responding to the association’s concerns, Williams said MBIE was confident the panel would deliver on its purpose.
She also noted that, rather than being representative of the sector, the panel been selected to hold a “set of skills and experience”.
She listed those as leadership, independence, an international perspective, and understanding the contribution of research, science and innovation to “productivity and wellbeing”, along with the “Aotearoa New Zealand context, including giving effect to Te Tiriti”.
“While the National Research Priorities will be the Government’s primary way to invest in mission-led research, they will not cover all Government funding for research, science and innovation,” she said.
“There are many other aspects of Te Ara Paerangi that will help to build a modern, future-focused system for New Zealand, such as the enhanced fellowship schemes, applied doctorates, Wellington Science City and Horizon Europe association funded through Budget 2023.”
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.
