Martin Tracey: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMartin Tracey: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5163. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First):Kia ora Mr Chair. Thank you very much for the call. I was going to take a call on science and innovation in this particular part of debate but there are a couple of things I want to address that have been previously spoken about by the Minister in the chair Simon Bridges and a previous Minister.I challenge the current Minister in the chair Simon Bridges to outline for me where the northern border of the Auckland super-city is because the Minister in the chair said that inside this Budget there are some amazing transport dollars being spent in Auckland City. That may very well be true for central Auckland but I have firsthand accounts of people in Wellsford who are in the super-city of Auckland—they happen to sit in the Northland electorate; perhaps that is the problem but they are in the super-city of Auckland—who are having to fill their own potholes in their own roads with lime that they themselves have bought Minister because there is no funding from this Government for those rural roads. I challenge the Minister to outline for me where the border of the super-city of Auckland is because I am not very confident that the National Government understands exactly where it is. So that is the first thing.The second thing is that Minister Joyce stood up and talked about the wonderful things that were done in this Budget with regard to international students. It may very well be true that we have schools saying that they actually have to spend 60 percent of their operations grants on international students because the funding from this Government is so low and that is probably a topic we will get into in the next part of this debate around education. Let us talk for a moment about science and innovation which is part of this particular debate.I want to talk about the Performance-based Research Fund and the fact that this Government and Mr Joyce have said that the Performance-based Research Fund is the next big thing with regard to science research in this country and the way it is funded. That is what they say it is. The Performance-based Research Fund has $250 million and the Government is going to raise that amount to $300 million by 2017. Fantastic; the problem is the unintended consequences. What have we got going on because there is a 100 percent competitive model with regard to research in this country? There is 100 percent competitive model with regard to scientific research.This is the worst thing that has happened to science in this country since the blimming shake-up of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research which I believe was done by a National Government as well. That Minister in the chair would not know it because that member probably is not old enough to actually understand what happened in New Zealand then but some of us are and some of us learnt from the mistakes that were made. When the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research closed we lost scientist after scientist after scientist to Australia. It put us behind the mark internationally for years on end and it is one of the reasons we need the Performance-based Research Fund supposedly. We have to encourage scientists to come back.But what is happening with the fund? The unintended consequences are that staff are being persuaded to resign on the understanding that they will be rehired after the round for the Performance-based Research Fund is completed. Staff are being put on fixed-term agreements to avoid them being counted in the fund’s measurements. Staff are being offered shorter fixed-term agreements to avoid them being counting in the fund’s measurements. Potential staff are not being employed to avoid having them being counted in Performance-based Research Fund scores. Does the Minister know about this? Does Minister Joyce know about this? Yes he does. He sat at the Education and Science Committee and he said: “Yes we are aware of the rorting.” Is the Government going to change it? No not quickly. Why not? Because it is that commercial model which the Government believes is all that is important.Where is the public-good science? Where is the interest-led science that actually led to inventions that this country is now known internationally for? It has gone because this Government does not believe in funding public-good interest-led science that adds to New Zealand’s future. This Government believes in funding only those who have some sort of pre-proven economic benefit.How does that affect every business in let us just say Wellsford or let us just say Te Hana or let us just say Kerikeri? Do you know how it affects them? How it affects them is they do not even know it exists. They do not even know that dollar for dollar research investment exists. They do not even know what Callaghan Innovation does and yet they are in the super-city of Auckland. They are sitting in a city where this Government under legislation passed only 2 years ago purchased the FoodBowl in Auckland to help food manufacturers and food production go from there to there and to packaging to send it overseas. Yet inside the northern borders of the super-city of Auckland they do not know a thing about it.That is because this Government is urban-centric. This Government does not see the regions. This Government believes—