Martin Tracey: Advanced Technology Institute Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Martin Tracey: Advanced Technology Institute Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 28 November 2012. Volume:686;Page:6876. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Chair. Thank you very much. As I was saying last night I was just picking up on Callaghan Innovation as the institute is now called and picking up on a comment by Dr Megan Woods earlier in the evening around perhaps a lack of direction or a lack of information out in the general public and in corporate industry bodies universities and research institutes around the purpose—the purpose as we understand it—of the new institute. I am going to verbalise my understanding created at the Education and Science Committee of what I thought we had general consensus on to make sure that it is placed in  
Hansard  
so that if and when this comes back as a problem around the lack of understanding of the purpose there is a touch place for those organisations and others to go to. 
My understanding from the select committee meetings we had is that 80 percent of the institute’s job will be to create relationships. It will be to bring together—recognising that there are a lot of people currently working together and working well—players inside this innovation and research space with business to bring things to a commercial outcome. Eighty percent of the institute’s job is to be around this relationship-building making sure that all the players inside this space know about each other and are linked to each other; 20 percent is the ability of the institution to directly participate in or fund research itself. 
That bit is a little sticky because I think the Advanced Technology Institute Bill is agnostic. The bill is agnostic on whether it will actually provide in-house research or whether it will fund external research. Phil O’Reilly I think it was said to us in his submission that he felt that it was important that the institute has some skin in the game. That skin in the game is going to be this 20 percent research capacity. We could not get 100 percent commitment as I mentioned from anybody as to how much that 20 percent is going to be. 
What we do know out of the Estimates of Appropriations 2013 is that there is on page 235 the appropriation for capital expenditure to support the establishment of the Advanced Technology Institute of just under $12 million. We know that but we have not had any figures fleshed out as of yet as to how much money will be available within this 20 percent research development potential. We could not get a very strong commitment that this would not be contestable funding—that the Advanced Technology Institute would not move into the currently contestable funding area. Particularly on the Opposition benches we very much wanted to have that commitment. 
Most of the submitters were very strong in their submissions about the fact that there is not enough contestable funding and that to have another organisation fighting for the same dollar would not be useful. So it was our understanding that this 20 percent is hopefully going to be additional research money inside the Advanced Technology Institute that it could use to fund things. An example of what it might fund was asked of me by the Auckland University. That 20 percent purpose component could be used to support PhD or postdoctoral students going into small or medium sized businesses and working with them to do the research to be able to take their product from that place to a much more commercialised place so as to build them into medium to large sized businesses and therefore benefit the rest of New Zealand. There is a danger with that. There is a danger that the Advanced Technology Institute will then create winners or losers but I really do not see how you can get away from that. At some stage a decision has to be made about what one is going to back so there is always going to be that danger. 
The other thing that is a concern around the fact that we were not able to get some tight finance that was going to be committed to the purpose of the Advanced Technology Institute or Callaghan Innovation is the fact that it actually cost a million dollars in external consultants to establish the Advanced Technology Institute—a million dollars in external consultants to establish it. So it would have been nice to think that with the $12 million under the Budget and the million dollars in external consultants spent to the end of the financial year we might be able to get some financial time lines and some finance around those numbers. Thank you.