New Zealand researchers and politicians outline standpoints in pre-election panel session
Scientists have put their concerns about funding levels and job security to representatives of New Zealand’s major political parties.
At a panel session run by the New Zealand Association of Scientists ahead of the general election on 14 October, four party spokespeople outlined their plans for science and research.
Labor
Research minister Ayesha Verrall told the panel on 5 September that Labor wanted to use the forthcoming national research priorities to help focus spending and as a way of “developing new economies”.
Verrall mentioned climate change and the Ageing Well National Science Challenge as areas where funding was “spread incredibly thin”.
“We seem to struggle to mobilise ourselves around these really big problems,” Verrall said.
Nationals and Opportunities
Frances Hughes, speaking on behalf of the National Party, focused on the party’s plans to grow the overall “pie” of the national economy and to free up the rules on the use of genetically modified organisms.
She said the Nationals wanted to “reduce bureaucracy around the way we conduct research and trials in New Zealand”.
“It is through research and science that we will grow this economy,” she said.
The Nationals’ official science spokesperson is Judith Collins.
The Opportunities Party was represented at the event by Ben Wylie-van Eerd. He said that while he generally supported Labor’s Te Ara Paerangi Future Pathways research reforms, they would need a certain level of funding to succeed.
Funding and careers
Around 140 people from the science sector, mostly from the Crown Research Institutes, attended the session online in addition to the in-person audience in Wellington.
According to polls taken during the session, the audience’s main concern was funding levels, closely followed by issues around job security and career development. The panel was jointly organised with the Public Service Association, a trade union.
Verrall said the government had taken that on board in the Te Ara Paerangi reforms by making its first changes around fellowships and career funding. She said that the forthcoming national research priorities system might offer roles lasting up to 10 years at a time.
Wiley-van Eerd said the traditional job market system did not serve the specialised nature of science well, and “the way the market works [now] is that people just don’t become scientists at all”.
Rebuilding trust
The science spokespeople were also asked about rebuilding trust between scientists, government and the public.
Wiley-van Eerd, who currently works for the government agency Callaghan Innovation, said that to some extent scientists needed to improve communication of their work. “I think we need to get back to that. We stopped demonstrating our knowledge—we just said ‘trust us’.”
New Zealand First representative Taylor Arneil said that science needed to have a clear goal and scientists needed to show “this is what we want to deliver and this is how it is going to have a positive impact on New Zealand”.
Arneil emphasised the need for better partnerships between researchers and industry to improve research commercialisation.
The four candidates backed away from committing to any change to the current research, science and innovation portfolio, saying they would either have to assess that in government or were focused on the current reforms.
A Greens spokesperson was unable to attend the event.