Clendon David: Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Clendon David: Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:677;Page:702] 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to have almost the last word on a bill that has had a very protracted journey through this House. Its time in the House was of course extended by the rearguard action against the particularly appalling legislation the voluntary student membership bill and the Greens look forward to being part of a future Government that will turn round that bill and give us some legislation that puts a proper support around students and indeed our tertiary institutions.  
The Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill is something dear to my heart and we have been very pleased to support it. My own academic career if you like has bridged the gap between arts—or humanities—and science. I was fortunate to do a Bachelor of Arts at Auckland University in the late 1980s having come to tertiary study as an adult. There were remarkable people there at the time. Some of the lecturers and teachers were people like Barry Gustafson Andrew Sharp Linda and Graham Smith Colin Lankshear—good thinkers people who understood both the history and the present moment and who anticipated some of the shifts in education and indeed in science that were inevitable as a result of the so-called neoliberal revolution of the 1980s and 1990s.  
From that I then went to Lincoln University to do a master’s degree in science. And it was a real revelation to me I have to say having come from one world view informing learning and knowledge in an arts context to go to do a science degree and discover people coming from a fundamentally different world view and holding a different set of expectations and experiences about teaching and learning. It was a revelation and I think that as Moana Mackey has commented in her contribution we are now coming back to a place even in the Western tradition where historically there were remarkable men and women who understood natural science who understood geology and astronomy and biology but also knew their classics knew their history knew their culture and this is a step back towards formalising a better integration of those two very different perspectives. C.P. Snow who in the 1930s—1931 I think—delivered his seminal lecture  
Two Cultures 
 captured very well the extent to which science and humanities had got locked into their separate silos for a variety of reasons and were creating different languages and more important they were making us almost unable to share knowledge to share experiences across so-called natural science and the humanities.  
This bill is a step towards as I said formalising what is actually almost these days common practice in bringing together multidisciplinary approaches—multifunctional approaches even—to solving problems and dealing with the challenges scientific cultural social and economic of the 21st century. I was fortunate this morning in fact to be on campus at Lincoln at its orientation programme. I was there as part of the Greens on Campus. It was rewarding to see the waves of students desperate to find out more about the Green Party and to get involved with us of course. But more so it was interesting to talk particularly to some of the postgrads who are now doing things like postgrad degrees in international conservation management and postgrad degrees in ecosystem management. And these are relatively new disciplines. Historically you would study ecology or you might study biology—whole organism biology molecular biology—or you might study planning. These disciplines are now being brought together in programmes that will enrich us as New Zealanders the individuals pursuing those programmes. My own experience of teaching ecosystem management for example requires you to have a good understanding of the core principles of ecology which in my view should inform economics but also should aid us in understanding the day-to-day impact of the human relationship with the natural world with ecosystems upon which we depend and that we are capable—and have proven ourselves capable—of extensively modifying not always in ways that are positive for us or those ecosystems. 
So it is a pleasure to be part of the wrapping up phase of this bill if we like. I believe the Royal Society will continue to go from strength to strength. I think it is important to acknowledge as my colleague Catherine Delahunty mentioned that in this coming together of science and humanities we should acknowledge and even pursue the contribution that forms of indigenous knowledge have to make not least of all matauranga Maori. Those remarkable people those Polynesians came to New Zealand and became tangata whenua became Maori. They survived and thrived in this place because they were very good at observing natural cycles. They developed over not very many generations an extraordinarily subtle and complete understanding of the biology of the geology of the meteorology of this country in a way that enabled them to survive and to thrive. They also embedded that within a cultural framework that acknowledged the metaphysical and the spiritual and I think what I consider the false distinction between so-called objective scientific knowledge and the metaphysical and the spiritual is something that has not served us well. I think in all humility that bodies like the Royal Society and scientists generally are now starting to re-engage with the spiritual with the non-objective world if you like and I think that will serve us well into the future.  
So I will just wrap up my brief comments. I say again that the Greens wholeheartedly support this. It has been an interesting journey in more ways than one and we do wish the Royal Society well in its future and indeed the scientific endeavour upon which our future economic well-being certainly will in part depend. Kia ora.