A rolling maul of policy announcements has been promised to attract foreign investment, explains The Bulletin’s Stewart Sowman-Lund.

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Major reforms to the science sector

The government has unveiled what it has described as the largest reform to the country’s science sector in more than 30 years, as it pushes to attract foreign talent and grow the economy. We’ll have more on what else the prime minister outlined in his state of the nation speech further down, but first, a look at what was announced around science. The Spinoff’s Shanti Mathias has an excellent explainer of the move and the background to it, reporting that outgoing science minister Judith Collins announced the existing seven Crown Research Institutes will be merged into three Public Research Organisations, while a fourth will be created specifically to focus on “advanced technology”.

The changes are largely targeted at ensuring that research funding has more direct commercialisation potential, explained Mathias, with the launch of a new “one-stop shop” called Invest New Zealand to attract international expertise and foreign investment into New Zealand’s innovation sector. If all of this sounds familiar, that might be because the government has already cut Marsden fund grants for humanities and the social sciences, as Mathias explained last year, arguing that “real impact on our economy will come from areas such as physics, chemistry, maths, engineering and biomedical sciences”.

Callaghan Innovation to be shuttered

The science reforms will also see the closure of Callaghan Innovation, the Crown entity responsible for making business more innovative, with hundreds of staff impacted (some will be shifted around to parts of the reformed science sector) It’s not a totally surprising decision, though it wasn’t one that had been explicitly foreshadowed. Callaghan had been facing cost pressures for some time, not helped by the government’s push to find savings in the public sector. The Post reported last year that Callaghan was grappling with a proposed “reset” in order to focus “exclusively on revenue generating, commercial science services” – which sounds a lot like what the government is now enforcing across the board.

One perception of Callaghan is that it had relied on taxpayer funding for ventures that did not always deliver a worthwhile outcome. The Taxpayers’ Union has, for several years now, argued for disbanding the agency. In 2017, reported Stuff at the time, Act leader David Seymour described Callaghan as a “bureaucratic money-go-round”, though the then-National government pledged not to interfere. Seymour was still pushing for this in the run up to the last election, and his party was quick to welcome the announcement yesterday.

Science sector welcomes changes, but questions funding

The changes announced had been in the pipeline for a while, with a review panel set up by the government early last year to investigate revamping the science sector. The lengthy wait has seen the role of chief science advisor to the prime minister left vacant for some time. That position is set to be reshaped anyway, in light of the newly announced changes. The structural reforms have drawn a generally positive response from the science sector, reported BusinessDesk’s Greg Hurrell (paywalled), though there is some concern basic research – including in humanities subjects – could be neglected due to a lack of new funding. The Science Media Centre has compiled a comprehensive list of reactions to the announcements. Among them, Troy Baisden, co-president of the New Zealand Association of Scientists, who questioned whether the only goal was to “drain economic gain from the pool of knowledge developed over decades, without continuing to invest in either foundations or the pipes, composed of scientists and their careers through which knowledge flows”?

Growth, growth, growth…

I wrote yesterday that we were going to be hearing a lot about growth this year. As The Spinoff’s Toby Manhire reported from Luxon’s state of the nation address, the word cropped up no less than 43 times in the PM’s speech. “Yesterday was about whacking the starter motor with a hammer, of jolting out of the doldrums into a virtuous circle: confidence begets growth and growth begets confidence and somewhere along the way the mojometer goes ding,” wrote Manhire.

Luxon’s speech came on the same day that Stats NZ reported record numbers of New Zealanders were choosing to leave the country, an unfortunate backdrop to the government’s pledge to make the country an appealing place to live and work. While the science reforms were one part of the plan to drum up, yes, growth and innovation, there was more. As Manhire explained, much of the speech centred on political rhetoric. Luxon criticised the “culture of no” in New Zealand, arguing for things like more mining, more tourism and more concerts at Eden Park. Herald columnist Matthew Hooton (paywalled) observed “Obama-esque rhetoric” in the PM’s speech, noting that there were few solid policy details. Though, the government has promised a “rolling maul” of announcements in the months ahead, signalling yesterday was just the entrée. As Manhire pointed out, “six years ago, almost to the day, another new government embarking on its second full year in power pledged that 2019 would be ‘the year of delivery’. It was not long at all before that stake in the ground had metamorphosed into a rod for its back.”