Browning Steffan: Callaghan Innovation Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Browning Steffan: Callaghan Innovation Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 04 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7026. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
STEFFAN BROWNING (Green) 
: 
 I rise to speak to the Callaghan Innovation Bill. The model in this bill probably could be mostly right. It would be right if it was purely the facilitator that the bill spoke of initially—a connector of both business and people who cannot find the people they feel they need to solve some solutions—but the bill as it stands does not necessarily stop there. It goes on to a little bit of an unknown nebulous area that we are yet to find out about as the institute unfolds. 
Some of the wrongs are that effectively the Minister can interfere. For one the Minister could push genetic engineering through in there. He could say: “Hey we want our friends there to get some real help.” and push that way. The institute could do other things that suit its business agenda that are not actually in the public interest using Government funding. 
We look at the Crown research institutes and sometimes we wonder whether they are quite as functional as we might like but actually they are OK except in how they are funded. How they are funded is a problem and currently the structure for funding them is a little bit of a one-size-fits-all structure. Callaghan Innovation could be a good structure as needed because it requires other institutes to contribute and there is room for that sometimes but that is actually already happening with Crown research institutes too. However it needs independence and the independence is clearly not there in this structure. It would need certainty for scientists—certainty of jobs certainty of resources—and there is no real succession in there except that it may be the conduit for emptying out from the public sector scientists into the commercial world. The governance model needs some different strength. 
Crown research institute funding on the other hand if it was far more independent where they would have 51 percent of the control over how things work for them would be a much better area. It would be a much better outcome. We actually need science here that is pure science not just being obsessed with meeting some immediate commercial reality. There will be commercial benefits but not if it is just force-fed. 
The old Industrial Research Ltd did seem to have a record of poor management at times but what Industrial Research Ltd has done over recent years has been outstanding. I note the  
National Business Review 
 reporting on Shaun Coffey’s resigning from Industrial Research Ltd pointed out that this new institute will be a major challenge. We do not need it to be a major challenge; we need it to be an effective and certain structure. 
I note that Professor Jeff Tallon a physicist of superconductivity research has pointed out that industrial research will disappear into the institute’s maw. He had a concern about that. He also pointed out that Sir Paul Callaghan would have been shocked by his name being put to this structure and would not have put his name to any institution that has lost its focus on science and research. There is an unknown future. What we do know is that this is a privatisation of public science including feeding committed pure scientists into the commercial maw. 
Funding starvation—this will be a funder as well. It will go to the companies because this is what was put at the select committee. Scientists would be seconded from the science institutions and put into companies to do the bidding of the institute. The Institute of Professional Engineers New Zealand suggested that those researchers should ideally not be coming back and that the institute will receive replacements. So the Green Party will not be supporting this. We think there are too many flaws. Thank you.