Robertson Grant: State Sector Management Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Robertson Grant: State Sector Management Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Sitting date: 09 December 2010. Volume:669;Page:16264. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 Before I get into clauses 7 8 and 9— 
Louise Upston 
: Wishful thinking. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: Absolutely! I know Louise Upston will be taking a call because she followed this bill very closely in the Education and Science Committee. I am sure that we will hear from her. Rather than chipping across the Chamber she will get up and take a call because she believes in the importance of science Archives New Zealand and the National Library. 
I will comment briefly on Minister Ryall’s intervention earlier about the importance of having the strategic approach and improved responsiveness that we would see as a result of what is covered in Part 1. It is difficult to take that too seriously because I suspect that the improved responsiveness we will see is that the new Ministry of Science and Innovation will be quicker to say no; that will be the improvement in the responsiveness. If the Government is not prepared to commit resources to science research technology and innovation then all of this shuffling of deckchairs means nothing. I think it is important to say at the outset that members on this side of the Chamber are strongly supportive of science funding. We were very alarmed to see the moves that this Government made in its early days and we would like to see a greater commitment beyond simply structural changes which as my colleague David Shearer said do no harm as such but do not exactly lead us anywhere in a particularly positive direction. 
My colleague Chris Hipkins made some points about clause 7. Some submitters to the select committee expressed concerns about the way in which clause 7 constructs a hierarchy of criteria that will be assessed when making decisions about research science and technology funding. In particular concern was raised about the question of contestability. I know that Minister Ryall Paul Hutchison and other National members who have had a bit of involvement in the sector know that one of the really difficult balances in research science and technology is the balance between stable funding and contestability. It truly is one of the enormous challenges that faces any Government in trying to work out how to ensure that we have that kind of blue-sky thinking that Chris Hipkins talked about or indeed how we avoid the “faster horse” phenomenon that Moana Mackey mentioned. How do we make sure that the new and innovative idea is taken up? 
The concern was raised in the select committee that the way in which clause 7(2) is laid out does not give sufficient emphasis to contestability. The officials made a good argument to the select committee that the merging of the Foundation for Research Science and Technology and the Ministry of Research Science and Technology bring together a number of different types of funding and that the foundation tended to have a fairly rigorously contestable process and the ministry has perhaps a number of other different processes that it is working on and therefore we did not need to take up the idea of the submitter who said that the contestability provisions of the Foundation for Research Science and Technology Act should find their way into this Act. That is an interesting point and it is one that the Minister may choose to comment on. 
When we read through clause 7(2) or the whole of clause 7 for that matter it is true to say that it does not have that clear statement around the question of contestability. I think it is important that we have that balance of stable funding. In particular we know that the Crown research institutes talk a lot about the importance of stable funding and contestable funding—contestable funding that highlights the possibilities of cooperation between different actors in the science sector. I think we can certainly support clause 7 as it stands now but the Minister may choose to comment on how this definition and the purposes will deal with the question of balance between stable funding and contestable funding. I think that lies at the heart of getting our science system right. We have to have the contestability element to generate those new ideas. We have to have the funds to support those new ideas. From time to time when funding for the Marsden Fund is announced and there are some quite different new and unique funding elements—sometimes a research element is undertaken by the spouse of a former Prime Minister for instance or somebody like that—it draws attention from the media. But actually that blue-sky research sometimes is the thing that gives us the spark to generate both economic wealth and social and environmental benefits. I think clause 7(2) is interesting and I would like to hear from the Minister on it even though the select committee itself resolved to accept the officials’ advice in that area.