Advanced Technology Institute Bill

Kia ora, Mr Chair. Thank you very much. As I was saying last night, I was just picking up on Callaghan Innovation, as the institute is now called, and picking up on a comment by Dr Megan Woods earlier in the evening around, perhaps, a lack of direction or a lack of information out in the general public and in corporate industry bodies, universities, and research institutes around the purpose—the purpose as we understand it—of the new institute. I am going to verbalise my understanding, created at the Education and Science Committee, of what I thought we had general consensus on, to make sure that it is placed in Hansard so that if and when this comes back as a problem around the lack of understanding of the purpose, there is a touch place for those organisations and others to go to.

My understanding, from the select committee meetings we had, is that 80 percent of the institute’s job will be to create relationships. It will be to bring together—recognising that there are a lot of people currently working together, and working well—players inside this innovation and research space with business, to bring things to a commercial outcome. Eighty percent of the institute’s job is to be around this relationship-building, making sure that all the players inside this space know about each other and are linked to each other; 20 percent is the ability of the institution to directly participate in or fund research itself.

That bit is a little sticky, because I think the Advanced Technology Institute Bill is agnostic. The bill is agnostic on whether it will actually provide in-house research or whether it will fund external research. Phil O’Reilly, I think it was, said to us in his submission that he felt that it was important that the institute has some skin in the game. That skin in the game is going to be this 20 percent research capacity. We could not get 100 percent commitment, as I mentioned, from anybody as to how much that 20 percent is going to be.

What we do know out of the Estimates of Appropriations 2013 is that there is, on page 235, the appropriation for capital expenditure to support the establishment of the Advanced Technology Institute of just under $12 million. We know that, but we have not had any figures fleshed out as of yet as to how much money will be available within this 20 percent research development potential. We could not get a very strong commitment that this would not be contestable funding—that the Advanced Technology Institute would not move into the currently contestable funding area. Particularly on the Opposition benches, we very much wanted to have that commitment.

Most of the submitters were very strong in their submissions about the fact that there is not enough contestable funding, and that to have another organisation fighting for the same dollar would not be useful. So it was our understanding that this 20 percent is hopefully going to be additional research money inside the Advanced Technology Institute that it could use to fund things. An example of what it might fund was asked of me by the Auckland University. That 20 percent purpose component could be used to support PhD or postdoctoral students going into small or medium sized businesses and working with them to do the research to be able to take their product from that place to a much more commercialised place so as to build them into medium to large sized businesses and therefore benefit the rest of New Zealand. There is a danger with that. There is a danger that the Advanced Technology Institute will then create winners or losers, but I really do not see how you can get away from that. At some stage a decision has to be made about what one is going to back, so there is always going to be that danger.

The other thing that is a concern around the fact that we were not able to get some tight finance that was going to be committed to the purpose of the Advanced Technology Institute, or Callaghan Innovation, is the fact that it actually cost a million dollars in external consultants to establish the Advanced Technology Institute—a million dollars in external consultants to establish it. So it would have been nice to think that with the $12 million under the Budget and the million dollars in external consultants spent to the end of the financial year we might be able to get some financial time lines and some finance around those numbers. Thank you.

I will take a brief call on this part of the Advanced Technology Institute Bill, as I intend to say more in the debate on Part 2 when we get there, merely to say that Labour, of course, will be supporting this bill, but with significant reservations. I think it is important to put that on record. It ties into the fact that the purpose clause of the bill is so unclear. It is not really there tackling the big issues that need to be tackled. The Government, it seems, is afraid to articulate those big goals, lest it fail. This has some broad parallels elsewhere with other things that are going on in the Government’s agenda. So we do not see in the purpose clause a clear expression that this legislation is intended to increase jobs, is intended to increase skills, or is intended to grow the economy in the high-value manufacturing sector. I intend to say more on this aspect in the debate on Part 2 of the bill, so I will leave my contribution there, so that when we come to a fuller discussion of clauses 10 through 14, we can take up that debate and say where those clauses, which refer back to the purpose, fall short.

This Government really needs to put its money where its mouth is. We have seen very little investment in this area, and we see lots of weasel words in the purpose clause that are not backed up later in the bill. So we see a Government that is not prepared to tackle the big issues with economic development, and is not prepared to engage in joined-up thinking. So although these are nervous first steps and we will be supporting it, we think the Government could be doing much more to advance economic development in New Zealand.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 151 in the name of the Hon Steven Joyce to Part 1 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.