Clendon David: Advanced Technology Institute Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clendon David: Advanced Technology Institute Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 13 September 2012. Volume:683;Page:5233. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 Yes I was enjoying the previous speaker so much that his rather sudden ceasing took me by surprise. I am pleased to speak for the Greens on the Advanced Technology Institute Bill today. We will be supporting this bill at this reading. However our continued support will rely on some clarity and on our getting a degree of comfort about some of the aspects of the structure and the operation of this proposed organisation. 
We are yet to be convinced about some of the aspects that are proposed and we look forward with genuine interest to the submissions that we will no doubt get from the scientific community and from the business community in particular from some of those who are already working at that interface because this institution—this organisation—will not be coming into a vacuum. There are existing mechanisms and organisations doing some of what it is proposed that this Advanced Technology Institute should do. 
There is no question that we need to improve our performance in terms of research science and technology. We will not secure our economic future by putting large volumes of raw logs across the wharf nor will we get richer in any sense of that word by producing more and more milk powder. These are low-value high-volume commodities and that is not the economic future of New Zealand or New Zealanders. 
In our Green Party election campaign last year one of the key planks of that campaign was advocacy for investing heavily in a greentech cleantech economy one that can generate genuine wealth while also protecting the integrity and well-being of our communities and critically the environment that underpins it all. 
It is interesting when looking at this proposition—this institute that is to be established—as an occasional student of history. We know that this is not the first time an organisation has been proposed to link scientific effort the well-being of our economy and the appropriate use of our natural resources. In the early 1920s it was hotly debated and it generated the establishment of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research an organisation that served New Zealand extremely well for over 60 years and gave us a great advancement in terms of industry particularly primary production but elsewhere as well. 
That all came to an end of course. In 1986 there was a ministerial working group headed by one Sir David Beattie who was charged by the Government of the day with investigating the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and its contribution. He came back with a report called  
Key to Prosperity: Science and Technology Report of the Ministerial Working Party 
. The number of recommendations within that report included things like 150 percent tax deductibility for expenditure on research and development and setting the target of doubling New Zealand’s public and private sector investment in research by 1993 or 1994. They were quite ambitious targets quite ambitious goals and absolutely necessary and not terribly different from what we are endeavouring to do today. 
The Government—and indeed successive Governments of the time through the 1980s and 1990s—took very little heed of this excellent report. Possibly the report was undermined by the one line in it that uttered heresy in that time. It said that the market alone could not deliver the outcome that New Zealand wanted and needed. Of course in the 1990s the free market was all-powerful. Hopefully we have got over that and we recognise that collaboration between public and private sectors is actually the way to advance economically and socially. 
 The Crown research institutes which replaced the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research—interestingly one of those will now become a subsidiary of this new organisation—have always been hobbled by the legislation which requires them to generate profit and obliges them to endeavour to do long-term science and establish research strategies on 1 to 3-year funding cycles. I acknowledge the situation has improved somewhat in recent years. We still however have a great deal to do and considerably further to go. 
There are a number of issues we are concerned about within this bill. I mentioned the fact that Industrial Research Ltd will effectively be subsumed and we do wonder at the need for that. Industrial Research Ltd has some responsibilities in terms of engaging with industry notably in the high-value manufacturing end essentially as a research organisation and unless I have got it very wrong this new institute will not be a research organisation. 
I do wonder why this path has been taken to effectively create a very uncertain future for Industrial Research Ltd not least of all for the 360-odd people currently working within that organisation who as recently as late July this year through the New Zealand Public Service Association representative expressed their serious concern that they had absolutely no idea what was going on. They did not know what their future was. They did not know whether they had a future within this new structure. They had no idea what it meant for existing research projects. That is a major oversight and it does lend weight to the proposition we heard from Mr Cunliffe that perhaps the focus has been far too much on the management and far too little on the science. 
Nothing will undermine this proposition more quickly or more comprehensively than undervaluing the scientific community that will generate the horsepower that is the underpinning of it. For the last several decades we have been exporting many more scientists than we have been exporting science. That has to stop. Creating this level of uncertainty in a very key Crown research institute Industrial Research Ltd is not helpful in reversing that trend and we hope that will be acknowledged. 
I note with interest that within the bill it says that the new institute will be a Crown entity but nowhere in the bill does it actually define the category of Crown entity. I understood the Minister of Science and Innovation in his speech to say it would be a Crown agent and that would concern me to some extent. A Crown agent is an entity with the least amount of independence from the Minister. I do again think that this organisation if it is to succeed will need to be quite dynamic will need to be innovative and will need to move quite quickly. None of those are typically characteristic of any organisation that is very tightly bound to the policy of the Government of the day. I think this organisation will need a high level of independence from the Minister and we would hope that—perhaps I misheard the Minister—we can consider what category of Crown entity this organisation should be. 
One of the functions of the organisation—in fact the key function clearly—will be the allocation and administration of research funding as defined in the Research Science and Technology Act. It is not clear of course at this stage exactly what the nature or level of that funding will be or what the term of the funding put out to various interface organisations or entities will be. This is a level of detail that will determine how successful or not this organisation is. 
We note that there will be a stakeholder advisory group and that is an obvious and a sensible thing to do. I see no mention specifically of having Maori interests represented in that stakeholder group. Given that Maori are observed and recognised as being amongst the most entrepreneurial people on earth and that there is a quite dynamic and evolving Maori innovation and business network coming through I would sincerely hope that there will be a place at the table for that voice. 
Nikki Kaye in her contribution referred to a one-stop shop and that is helpful. Always in the business community people want a single point of contact with the Government and if this entity can achieve that that is a good thing. The danger however is that it will displace or disrupt existing organisations and existing relationships between the commercialisation units within the universities that are already doing some very good work. That transition will have to be managed very very carefully and thoughtfully so that you do not end up taking several large steps back before we start to move forward. 
I am intrigued by the $76 million over 4 years allocated to capital expenditure. This in my view ought to be a networking organisation. It is not a research organisation. It does not need laboratories or buildings that are specialised and fit-for-purpose buildings. As a networking organisation why is there the need for $76 million of capital expenditure over 4 years? There are a number of other issues that we will bring to the select committee. 
We also note that this institution is to be named after Sir Paul Callaghan an extraordinary man and a remarkable New Zealander. There is a cautionary tale however. Some years ago the Defence Force named a vessel after one of our greatest and most respected war heroes. It proved to be entirely unfit for purpose and ended up carting citrus fruit around the Mediterranean. It is to be hoped that the entity this Minister seeks to establish will become something worthy of its namesake rather than something that is redolent of lemons. Thank you.