No more ‘Science City’ for Wellington as minister scraps major reform

Thursday, 8 February 2024

Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins confirms Te Ara Paerangi - Future Pathways won’t be continuing.

The Government is scrapping a major science reform plan, including a $450 million investment to turn Wellington into a ‘science city’, leaving the science community anxious about future funding.

Part of Te Ara Paerangi - Future Pathways was the ‘Wellington Science City’, previously described by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Enterprise as “the Government’s largest ever capital investment in science infrastructure”.

The proposal looked to create three science hubs, one of them bringing together the likes of GNS Science, NIWA and Victoria and Massey Universities on climate change and disaster resilience. The second was to focus on health and pandemic readiness and the third was to be technology and innovation.

Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins confirmed Te Ara Paerangi - Future Pathways would not be continuing “as I will be looking at other ways to optimise opportunities in emerging and existing research, such as space, aerospace and biotechnology”.

Labour’s Wellington spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said the discontinuation of science city was “a backward step for Wellington”.

“This would have driven knowledge-based innovation in our city, and been a positive economic agenda for Wellington.

“We are left out of this Government’s vision.

The creation of three multi-institution research hubs aimed to bring scientists closer together to increase collaboration, and ensure better use of expensive equipment and facilities.

“The Government is not only making big cuts to the public sector, but also that opportunity through the science city for positive innovation and economic growth.”

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said he did not believe his Government was tough on Wellington, in light of public service cuts.

“What we are tough on is making sure that we've got a culture of fiscal discipline in place in the public service … We are going to make sure that there are savings generated because we need to make sure that actually we deliver outcomes for New Zealanders,” he said on Wednesday.

NZ Association of Scientists co-president Lucy Stewart said science in New Zealand was “pretty underfunded”.

“I don't think you'll find anyone who argued that we're leading the charge in terms of science funding, and Te Ara Paerangi and the Wellington city science hubs, there was a plan for things to get better.

“Now it's really a question of, what are we going to do with all that time and effort people put into it because they genuinely hoped that things would get better, is that just all going to go away?

“What we want to see is a positive direction towards research and science and New Zealand and some reassurance that there is a plan for fixing the huge systemic problems that we have.”

Dr Stewart said the funding for the National Science Challenge, which researches some of New Zealand’s biggest issues, ends soon, and there was no plan as far as they knew about future funding.

Stewart said those in the science community were feeling anxious. “People have just been stretched for years now.”

Nicola Gaston, co-Director of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, said the science city expenditure in the plan seemed to be mostly standard capital expenditure, “and it seemed to me the Te Ara Paerangi process was trying to take that regular investment and use it in a way to get universities and Crown Research Institutes talking to each other more”.

“The other thing that is absolutely massive … is the National Science Challenge money.

“The money runs out middle of this year … That money, if that is not being reinvested through priorities, it is a massive drop in funding across the research system. And that's the thing that we need answers [to].”

Epidemiologist Dr Michael Baker said Aotearoa's scientific capacity lacked sustainable funding, with ageing infrastructure a key issue facing the sector.

He thought the science city would have been a 'cost effective' way to build and maintain such capacity.

On the back of the Covid-19 pandemic and others, the pandemic research centre especially seemed 'critical' for New Zealand, Baker said.

'You can't build the capacity when the pandemic is upon you. You have to invest in it in advance.'

Meanwhile, Callaghan Innovation, New Zealand's innovation agency, has been tasked to find 7.5% savings as part of the Government’s public service cost saving cuts.

Asked why Callaghan Innovation had been set 7.5% instead of 6.5%, the higher figure set for organisations that had grown 50% or more since 2017, Collins said she intended to “identify and implement changes that improve the efficiency of the entire science, innovation and technology sector with minimal disruption, while being cognisant of the fact we are operating in an extremely tight fiscal environment”.

Labour science spokesperson Deborah Russell said it was disappointing news for those in the research and science sector, calling it a short-term cut that “will result in long term damage to our science infrastructure”.