Shearer David: Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Shearer David: Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:671;Page:17570] 
DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 As the Minister said there is some agreement on the importance of science and innovation in our society. The question as he quite rightly says is the emphasis and how we go about it. I will get to that in a minute but first I want to address the bill before us. What I did agree with the Minister on was that the Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill was brought about by the Royal Society approaching Parliament. It did not come from Parliament; it was at the society’s request. 
We need to remind ourselves that the Royal Society is one of the most pre-eminent prestigious organisations that we have in New Zealand. It is a body of real academic learning and of excellence. It is something that we hold up as being at the top of the pyramid in terms of learning. I will give a couple of statistics to back that up. The Royal Society is independent it is a national academy and it has 1200 members 344 elected fellows 10 regional branches and 60 constituent scientific and technological societies. Nearly 20000 scientists technologists and technicians are represented by the society. In other words the society does a remarkable job. One of the things we have benefited from—and I note the chair of the Education and Science Committee is here—is the sponsoring and bringing of scientists to Parliament. This has been very well-attended by members of Parliament who have come along and listened to some of the more innovative science that is coming out of our institutions right across the board be they Crown research institutes universities or the like. 
This bill was given a pretty thorough reading by the Education and Science Committee. Although it appears uncontroversial there were a number of submissions on it. The bulk of the submissions focused on the question of bringing the humanities into what they believed was a pure scientific organisation. The committee went through the bill quite carefully. We brought what is now the Ministry of Science and Innovation back twice to discuss some of the submissions to make sure that they were given a fair reading and I think we did that. At the end of the day this is something that has been decided on by the Royal Society and I think we must respect its wishes. 
I do not think—and we will get to this in the Committee stage when we look at the bill more closely—that the various branches that are affiliated to the Royal Society have the constitutional ability to change what was the real wish of the Royal Society itself. As I said we did look at changing a couple of the aspects of the bill—for example to take out the clause on American studies and compress the definition of what constituted humanities. As my colleague Grant Robertson pointed out this issue has gone through quite a large degree of consultation with the Royal Society. It was voted on back in 2009 and passed earlier last year and it has come to the point where we can discuss it in the Committee of the whole House. I do not think there will be too many objections to what it says. 
I want to touch on a couple of points mentioned by the Minister in his speech as I do not feel I can let them go. I will not dispute the information from Statistics New Zealand unlike the Prime Minister in his answers in question time today when he refuted what Statistics New Zealand was saying. There has been an increase in research and development take-up particularly amongst our businesses. The real question for me and I do not think the Minister actually answered this is how much of that was due to his new initiatives—the various vouchers. As we have now waited nearly 2 years for these vouchers and transfers to take effect there is no way that he can claim credit for those vouchers somehow lifting the amount of research and development spending by private firms by 10 percent. There is absolutely no way he can do so. 
Let us look at this initiative which was from 2008. We must remember that during most of 2008 we were under the much more visionary plan of having 15 percent tax credits on research and development spending. Most of that increase was due to the enthusiasm of those companies. They were incredibly enthusiastic about a 15 percent tax credit on their research and development spending. I will mention one company in particular—Gallagher Group in Hamilton— 
Sue Moroney 
: A fine company. 
DAVID SHEARER 
: It is a great company that has been going a long time. It said to me that the research and development tax credit allowed it to take first more risk and second it made the company think creatively about what was research and development and what was not and to be much more strategic about it. 
That typifies much of the feedback I have had from companies about a 15 percent tax credit. Instead we now have a bunch of technology grants that the Minister crows about but when it comes down to it of the companies that applied for these grants 60 percent of them were turned down. That is an extraordinarily wasteful use of taxpayers’ resources. The Minister fails to understand that he has shifted from a tax credit that would have promoted companies and helped them make real changes to the way in which they do research and development to simply giving them a handout. The Government is now giving companies the extra spending for research and development and what are those companies doing? A lot of them are transferring the money they have been spending and shifting it on to other things. They are transferring the current money on to other things. 
I want to bring up one further point on this matter. When I started I wanted to speak on this Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill completely from the point of view of the Royal Society but I cannot sit here and listen to the Minister talk about a step change that in fact is nothing but a step backwards. Let us look at what we could have had. We could have had a 15 percent tax credit that would have— 
Colin King 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. This is the second reading. The member is well wide of the mark. 
Grant Robertson 
: Point of order Mr Speaker. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: No I do not need any assistance. There is a Standing Order that says that we should confine our comments to the bill but it is quite interesting. The member is rebutting some of the comments made earlier. The member has a minute left but I say now to future speakers because I have the bill in front of me and I have been reading it quite closely that tax credits are not actually mentioned. From now on subsequent speakers will confine themselves to the bill. 
DAVID SHEARER 
: I will conclude on this argument. As I am sure that the Minister now feels suitably chastised about his ridiculous claims I will get back to the bill. The Royal Society is trying to bring humanities and the scientific community together. It is something that has been done in both Scotland and Canada. It has not been attempted in England or Australia where they have very separate societies but from what I can understand from the Australian experience they wish they could have this sort of a bill rather than the one they have. As Grant Robertson quite rightly put it we need to put our science our best designers and our humanities together to grow New Zealand. This is one way of doing it. I think that the Royal Society has been visionary in the way in which it sees the role for both the Royal Society and the prosperity of New Zealand in regard to the way in which we will be growing this economy which is about bringing the best of our talent and our brains together under this bill.