Shearer David: Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Shearer David: Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:676;Page:21520] 
DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 We have been debating the Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill now for some time and I think it is in the interests of everybody and particularly the Royal Society to move on with it. Although I know that we have about 4 years’ grace to get this legislation through nevertheless it would be in the interests of everybody including the Royal Society which would like to move on with this legislation and put it behind it for it to be concluded in this session. I know that we are definitely—certainly the Labour side anyway—keen to progress this bill as quickly as possible and to try to get it through so that we have some closure on this particular legislation before this session of Parliament comes to a close. 
To refresh everybody’s memory this legislation is supported by all sides of the House. We had about a dozen submitters who came and made submissions to the Education and Science Committee some months ago now. Some of those submissions—I think the bulk of the submissions—were concerned about the inclusion of the humanities into the legislation that established the Royal Society. Part of that really was that submitters feared that the inclusion of the humanities would water down the Royal Society and make it less focused on what they consider to be the evidence-based type of research that continues to go on within the science community. 
Having listened to many of those debates we felt that the Royal Society is probably the best judge of any risk that the bringing of the humanities into the Royal Society’s raison d’être might involve. In fact we believe that it could be a strength for the Royal Society to bring in the humanities amongst the Royal Society itself. I think that despite the fact that most of those who took objection—many of them came from the various branches of the Royal Society throughout the country—we found that it was an ill-founded fear and an ill-founded risk. 
The Royal Society as we know is one of our pre-eminent organisations in this country. It has been running for well over 100 years. It is the greatest pool of talent that New Zealand has in the science community and now we will broaden that into the humanities and social sciences as well. 
We did make some adjustments to the characterisation of what might be included and what might not be included. From memory American studies was excluded for example. We involved that in a more generalised definition. 
In conclusion to my opening point on this bill I say that Labour would like to see progress on this bill concluded this year. I think that is in everybody’s interests. Certainly the Royal Society would like this bill to be concluded and to be wrapped up before the end of the year. We know that we have a buffer of 3 or 4 years to allow this bill to go through but I think it would be in the best interests of the House if we were able to get this bill through so that the Royal Society having made its recommendations and made its internal decisions and really only requiring this Parliament to rubber-stamp the conclusion of this bill is able to move forward. 
I will resume my seat with the wish that we progress this bill as quickly as possible. I am sure that some of my other parliamentary colleagues may want to take a call and expand on that a bit further.