Joyce Steven: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeJoyce Steven: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee[Sitting date: 17 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18550. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Science and Innovation):I think the member opposite David Clark first raised the issue of lame ducks and on that note I would first like to say happy birthday to Trevor Mallard. I understand it is a big birthday today. Secondly speaking of lame ducks I see his leader is certainly struggling along in a way that could be described only as a lame duck’s. The member is often guilty of over-egging the story and unfortunately he therefore ends up pretending a case that is not so—in fact he went on this huge conspiracy chat for the last 5 minutes about how it was all some sort of ideological conspiracy which of course it is not. Fundamentally—Dr David Clark: What about staff retention Minister?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Oh be quiet parrot. Fundamentally—[Interruption] Well Mr Chair I cannot—[Interruption]The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! It is sort of an equal-handed kind of set of events here. The member was perhaps interjecting rather too much and the Minister on his feet should have used appropriate terminology in addressing people. The Minister will continue and let us just keep some decorum.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I apologise for the avian references Mr Chair. The situation is simply this: as with many of our Crown research institutes we have organisations that have historically had large numbers of assets many of which are old many of which were built around the 1940s or 1950s or inherited from other purposes—Dr David Clark: Invermay are the newest ones; the Minister knows it.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Shh! You will learn something. Many of them have large amounts of land but they also need to modernise their facilities to attract new staff and that is true of AgResearch it is true of Plant and Food Research it is true of Landcare Research and so on. And so they are all dealing with the challenge of modernising their assets to attract not just the existing generation of scientists but the new generation of scientists that they need to bring into those organisations.So AgResearch has embarked on this process and has proposed $100 million worth of investment in its organisation to bring its facilities up to speed and to be modern facilities. As part of that it has proposed some changes in the configuration of their institutes. It never proposed to close Invermay; it has proposed to move some staff groups. It has been through a long and rigorous process in terms of how it would finalise those particular proposals. It has landed in a space that I think many critics have found to be a significant improvement in terms of what it originally proposed and that is an important part of the process—that you consider and you put forward proposals and you then respond to the feedback on those.AgResearch has proposed at this time to retain the Invermay farms and the Ballantrae Hill Country Research farms. It is going to retain the existing farm systems deer researchers at Invermay which I think makes a lot of sense. It is strengthening the deer team at Invermay. It is retaining the herd obviously at Invermay. It is transferring the sheep flock from Woodlands to Invermay. It is also combining more with Otago University staff which of course was the original promise of the Christie Building—that there would be some Otago University staff located in Invermay. That is now going to happen. AgResearch has invited some of the regional players that have significant science teams of their own in the area of environmental science to co-locate at Invermay as well to build up that. I am hoping that the Southland Regional Council and the Otago Regional Council take AgResearch up on that opportunity because I actually think that would save money for the ratepayers of both regions as well as building a real centre of excellence in this environmental science area. So I think AgResearch has landed positively.I appreciate that Mr Clark will never be happy. Interestingly though we have not had a call from Mr Lees-Galloway who is more than happy about the shifts that advantage the Palmerston North area. That is one of those things where one end of the Labour Party speaks out of one side of its mouth and the other end speaks out of the other side. In fact I think the leader of the Labour Party was in Palmerston North committing to the investment in the Palmerston North campus at the same time as his little friend Mr Clark was down in Dunedin condemning the change. So I think the challenge of all of that is that the Labour Party members are basically saying depending on which part of the country they are in that there will either be no change or lots of change but they do not need any more money. I think that is another circle they are going to struggle to square.The other thing I just note in passing is that this Government is making very big investments in the science sector in Dunedin. There have been two very positive front-page articles in the Otago Daily Times in the last couple of weeks. Two new centres of research excellence are being picked up at Otago University and there is also the doubling—the doubling—of health research that the university has picked up in the current year. These are things that interestingly have not been greeted with great public relations—Report noted.