Opinion
“Te Aranga Paerangi – Future Pathways” – Review and views on the RSI Green Paper
Allan Main, Principal, MAINly Consulting Ltd All opinions expressed here are the author’s personal views and should not be attributed to any other party or entity.
Introduction
Scope of document
The Labour Government, provided with a sweeping mandate to govern at the last election, has shown itself to be unusually daring in 2021 in pursuing fundamental reform of several public institutions. First the Ministry of Health announced a major plan to condense administration of the health and disability system into a single centralised agency, and to substantially rejig the Ministry. Shortly thereafter the “3 Waters” proposal was announced to centralise responsibility for our drinking water, wastewater and stormwater networks into a central government agency. Most recently, in late October the Minister of Research and Science, Hon Dr Megan Woods and her Associate Minister, Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall released their Government Green Paper “Te Aranga Paerangi – Future Pathways”¹ which presumes to review New Zealand’s Research Science and Innovation (RSI) system. If we have grown accustomed to inertia in New Zealand government then 2021 seems to be the year of breaking that habit. The first two plans have precipitated no small amount of controversy. Can we expect the same from this third announcement?
So what scope does the paper traverse?
RSI in review – again The Government signalled the RSI review through declaring² that our “30-year-old RSI system needs to modernise to meet future requirements”. That statement provides something of a half-truth as this is not the first review of the publicly funded RSI system in 30 years as implied in that declaration. Back in 2009 the Government of the day commissioned an independent taskforce to review the performance of CRI’s. Their report, published in February 2010³ was driven to resolve a significant number of the same issues (poor clarity on institutional roles, destructive competition, poor collaboration performance with unreliable and unsustainable funding) that the current ministers cite to precipitate this next re-evaluation. In today’s case the government has opened its door to review through the vehicle of this green paper, an approach touted as a “no commitment” position paper for general consultation. In this instance the Minister is at pains to advise “The outcomes of this process will be informed by your input: we have no pre-commitment to specific solutions”. In short, a Green Paper provides an opportunity to fly some kites in order that political palatability can be determined without losing face if a backtrack proves sensible. At 43 pages, as government papers go it is not a particularly lengthy tome but there is something about its style that makes it a challenging read, unresponsive to skim reading. There is an awkward and disjointed flow that demands it be read with close attention. This is not a document for dipping in and out of by adventitious grazing. 26
Food New Zealand
An executive highlights summary would embody the 43 pages in these brief statements of intent: • Setting Priorities – Providing a set of national research priorities to direct research to national needs with ministers and ministries having a more direct role in determining big picture science ambitions; • Funding Reform – Looking for funding mechanisms that provide greater reliability and continuity for CRI’s, possibly by directly funding institutional fixed costs with variable costs recovered through project funding; • Workforce – Providing enhanced career pathways for researchers within a system of well-ordered research institutions (extending to include universities); • Infrastructure – More efficient use of research assets through co-location or shared use of infrastructure resources between all parts of the research and education system with potential scope for consolidation, potentially rationalising the number of CRI’s; • Te Tiriti – Placing Maori and Te Tiriti front and centre in science funding decisions and direction. The latter point provides a strong backbone theme to this straw man. If the focus of a document can be informed by the density of keyword use, then the frequency of Maori-related terms indicates the priority this aspect is accorded by government in performance of the review. While defining terms like “research” (660 occurrences) and “system” (256 occurrences) show the greatest prevalence, amongst qualifying terms “Maori” (162 occurrences), “matauranga” (62 occurrences) and “Te Tiriti” (61 occurrences) show the strongest presence. These compare with “CRI(s)/Crown Research Institute(s)” (89 occurrences), researcher(s) (56 occurrences) and “funding” (135 occurrences) holding lesser mention. It appears from that metric that the government intends that this review will bring a strong lens to integrating the Maori voice into the science system as a top priority. Of specific interest to this audience, the term “food” receives just six mentions. Notably the paper includes collections and databases alongside facilities and equipment as critical components of the RSI infrastructure and the review extends to include how these can be better supported to make them more efficiently and effectively applied to research and to inform national action.
