Woods MeganHon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Research Science and Innovation): Thank you Madam Chair. It's my pleasure to take a call in this economic development and infrastructure section specifically to talk about two reports that are occurring here: the annual review of AgResearch Ltd. and the annual review of Callaghan Innovation. I think both these reports in many ways speak to some of the points that the previous speaker has just raised.This Government has a very clear economic strategy and that is about us partnering with business to encourage innovation productivity and to build a skilled workforce. It is about the development of an economy that is sustainable that is productive and that is inclusive. These are things that we have a range of policies that we are working towards and some of them are covered off in the reports that I'm speaking to today. Specifically one of the key planks of what we're trying to do of course has been mentioned is that actually we're not just seeing economic development and productivity as something that happens in our cities; that this is a Government that for the first time in a generation is substantially investing in economic development in our regions with the Provincial Growth Fund.We are also looking at how it is that we need to transition our economy. We know change is coming. We've set up the New Zealand Green Investment Fund Ltd in order to ease that transition. We're a Government that is investing in infrastructure: $42 billion over five years—investment in core infrastructure from this Government.But one of the other key planks of what we're doing is an investment in research and development. Now one of the previous speakers the Hon Paul Goldsmith said that the R & D tax credits were replacing the growth grants of the previous Government. That is something that is covered off in Callaghan Innovation's report. I think this could go down as one of the understatements of the year that growth grants were a scheme that helped around 300 businesses with their R & D needs each year.What we as a Government in the period that's covered off in these reports have done is put in the policy work and indeed now the legislation is passed to have an R & D tax credit that will benefit 10 times that number of businesses in working alongside them to reach this Government's aim of finally getting serious about lifting our percentage of GDP spent on R & D. At the moment we languish way down in the OECD tables. We only spend around 1.38 percent; there's been a slight lift but we are way below where we need to be if we are going to be the productive sustainable inclusive economy that we want to produce. Well we have an ambition to lift our expenditure on R & D to 2 percent over the two-year period.When Callaghan Innovation came before the select committee this is something they talked about in terms of the work they were doing in order to transition to this and they emphasised a number of points when they appeared before the committee in terms of the work that they were doing both with the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and with organisations in terms of facilitating this switch. This is the kind of transformative measure that we need in order to realise the kind of economy and the kind of country that we want to be. We as a Government when we talk about raising our expenditure to 2 percent of GDP know that we won't be doing that through public expenditure alone. What we want to do is have the right support mechanisms in place so that the private sector also increase their expenditure. One of the key indicators that we are looking to lift through this measure the R & D tax incentive is to raise business expenditure on R & D because we know that this will lead to higher-paying and skilled jobs and is something that we have to make sure that we are putting in the work to do.Likewise we saw when AgResearch appeared before the committee that they were talking about some of the fundamental work they're doing around the decarbonisation from biological emissions work and some of the pieces they are doing there.So thank you Madam Chair. I would like to conclude by thanking the chair for this opportunity to address the House on these reports.