Curran Clare: Callaghan Innovation Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Curran Clare: Callaghan Innovation Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 04 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7022. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South) 
: 
 We certainly do need confidence and we certainly are not going to get it from that Government over there. Under this Government—under its watch—we have lost 40000 jobs in manufacturing. Just this year alone more than 50000 New Zealanders have left for Australia. That does not exactly fill one with much confidence for the initiatives that the Government is coming up with. It is a disaster. It is a disaster and the solutions require a hands-on approach that is designed to make some brave decisions—brave decisions about economic development that are about joining up our economic development and having an actual strategy that is actually going to deliver some jobs down the track. 
This bill the Callaghan Innovation Bill is a poor effort at doing that. It is more of a wet bus ticket. We as you know support this bill with reluctance. We consider it a missed opportunity and half-baked. It is a missed opportunity to truly grow the economy. It is typical of this Government because it is not interested in meaningful input from industry it is not interested in a broad economic development vision and it is not interested in a broad set of policy initiatives that make research science and technology more accessible to New Zealand business. Instead the Callaghan Innovation Bill is a so-called grand scheme that is not worthy of the name. 
We need to create an environment where innovation is interconnected between the education sector at the primary secondary and tertiary levels but also with industry so that we are producing young people with the skills that our industry needs to innovate and then—then—we also need a robust scientific research community the science providers and we need to understand what it takes to commercialise. We need all of those things and we need them all to be interconnected and not set apart from each other. But no instead we have got here a piece of legislation that has not been properly thought out where the industry has not been properly consulted where there is not a partnership or a collaborative approach and where it has been rushed through—rushed through—in a very short space of time which has not allowed the industry to fully participate or for it to be discussed. Instead we hear on the other side of the House talk about vested interests. Well where was the proper discussion in the select committee that truly consulted the breadth of the industry about this bill? 
I am pretty disappointed in this bill especially because it has come out of the Education and Science Committee which is chaired by Nikki Kaye. For this to be a good piece of legislation it requires an understanding of 21st century learning and innovation but it clearly does not have that. It is held in suspicion by the stakeholders and I am sure that my colleagues across this side of the House have talked about that. It needs to have the stakeholders on board to make an innovation economy thrive. Those who did submit had very mixed views and reservations and I have read some of those submissions. There were many who submitted and there were many others who could have and should have submitted but were given virtually no time to do so. 
In contrast I have sat on that same select committee for the last 6 months with Nikki Kaye chairing considering another inquiry into 21st century learning and literacy and what is really needed to transform our education system to ensure that our children become the workers of the future—the workers of the future who are equipped for the jobs of the future that we need to transform our economy. That is a good piece of work but this is not. It is interesting how the dots have not been joined. This is another critical piece of the puzzle to put in place the levers that can help that innovation to occur but this bill is very unlikely to achieve that and it is as I said an enormous missed opportunity. 
I just draw everybody’s attention to part of that missed opportunity. In our technology sector which is still very much emerging and very much an important part of our future economy we need to have the flexibility to allow the small to medium sized enterprises—not the multinationals the small to medium sized enterprises—to grow and innovate. The technology sector is our third-largest export earner behind dairying and tourism. It generates over $7 billion in annual revenue. Technology touches on every other major market segment and it is our fastest-growing highest per capita - earning industry for the country. As we all know on the domestic front it contributes nearly $20 billion to New Zealand’s economy and employs over 40000 people. 
It has been identified under this very Government that innovation is one of its six priority sources of economic development but in order to make that happen it has got to get serious about the work that is really needed to make science and innovation the heart of our new economy. The submissions on this bill stated that what was needed was closer alignment with the science providers and that there were potential conflicts of interest with the funder/provider. I note that the member across the House alluded to that so clearly that is a bit of a sensitive issue over there. Overall it is a disappointment. I would like to quickly touch on how if a truly collaborative institute was being established to help grow our new manufacturing industry there would be a much closer synergy with the stated needs of the industry. 
I just want to mention our local information and communications technology industry which is a pretty important industry. It is a sector that if it was to grow to the same relative size as Australia’s would be a $4 billion industry rather than a $3 billion one. The Government with its $2 billion annual spend in this information and communications technology area could play a really key role in that industry’s development. Local IT companies are competitive. They are cost competitive. They have got a 25 percent to 35 percent cost advantage over Australian companies and a larger cost advantage compared with Australia the US and the UK. I mention this really important industry because that is what we should be thinking about. We should be joining the dots between the industries that we need to be investing in and our primary secondary and tertiary education sectors and what those industries and our tertiary education institutes are telling us. Just think what could be achieved if this Government was to actively listen to its emerging industries—not the multinationals but the Kiwi companies—and to what the Kiwi companies are saying to us. They are the ones that we so desperately need to foster and develop so that our kids have got jobs and so that our kids not only will have the jobs of the future but will actually stay in New Zealand and not be part of the 50000 people who have left New Zealand this year to go to Australia. 
I want to end on a broken promise which is just one of the many broken promises that we have seen under this Government and that this Government has become known for. It is a research-funding broken promise. The promise was to use a third of the savings from the discontinued research and development tax credit to directly fund research—$315 million over 3 years. The result has been $100 million over 4 years. This was largely from underspent funding from the previous year and reversing other commitments. Of the total new science funding spent in 2009-10 on science $44 million was unspent funding from the year before. In this bill this Government is trying to make a big deal of all the new funding but the reality is that although $166 million has been committed to develop this institute most of it came from existing funding savings. It is a missed opportunity. It is not part of a joined-up strategy. It is another example of how New Zealanders have been let down.