Advanced Technology Institute Bill

I rise to speak on these two initial clauses in this legislation. One we have just amended with the approval of the Minister of Science and Innovation’s amendments, so that the “Advanced Technology Institute Act 2012” will now be called the Callaghan Innovation Act 2012. I just want to reflect on that for a moment, because the late Sir Paul Callaghan was a man who was an extraordinary contributor to New Zealand. I remember listening to him at a Labour Party conference when he came and addressed us a year or two ago, and he was truly one of those very few people in the world who is charismatic. “Charismatic” is not a word that I apply to many people, at all. It is rather overused these days, because there are very few people in the world who can hold one’s attention the way Sir Paul did, and talk in terms that made him a superlative communicator of complex and inspiring facts and ideas about how human beings relate to science and how science relates to the development of human beings. So it is entirely appropriate that this advanced technology institute be called Callaghan Innovation. I have no problem with that, at all. It is a fitting tribute to the man and his legacy.

But I do have a bit of a problem with the fact that this institute, which has a lot of promise, has been bedevilled at the outset by a shambolic process. It is my fervent hope, and it is why the Labour Party is supporting this legislation, that Callaghan Innovation can actually realise some of the dreams that have been expressed in a few of the speeches on this establishing legislation. In other words, this idea—originally, the Advanced Technology Institute; now Callaghan Innovation—was announced, as I understand it, if I remember correctly, in the Budget. In fact, it was meant to have been in place by 1 November this year, if I remember correctly. But what we have is a bill that was referred to the Education and Science Committee on 13 September, with submissions closing on 1 October. If there was ever going to be a visionary plan about the development of New Zealand and the application of science to those wonderful primary production industries, as well as our secondary manufacturing industries, that could set our economy alight, this was going to be a significant part of it. But it seems to me that we have had nothing like a plan.

In fact, the kinds of amendments that my colleague Dr Megan Woods put forward would have improved the function and purpose of Callaghan Innovation, had the Government been prepared to seek a little improvement and a bit of logic, and had a bit of coordination been applied to the sector through this bill. So I am disappointed that this bill has gone through a shambolic process, with 2 weeks for submissions to be presented. Of course, that gave rise to minimal submissions and to submissions that were rushed and did not reflect—as I understand from my colleagues, because I do not sit on this committee—the full complexity and the vision and the potential of the science and innovation sector. There are issues around Callaghan Innovation and the bill that we are about to pass, and its ability to realise the potential for the improvement of the New Zealand economy and, in fact, some substantial futureproofing of the New Zealand economy.

So the commencement date is now 1 February 2013. It should have been 1 November. There should have been some months for this process to be undertaken with due respect and some seriousness around the purpose and the structure, and, more important, the relationships between Callaghan Innovation, the education sector, various aspects of industry, and the workforce that is going to be required to implement some of the ideals of Callaghan Innovation. But what we have is a bill that is rushed, that is inadequate, and that could have been improved with the amendments from other members of Parliament in this Committee—most particularly, Dr Megan Woods, but certainly David Clendon and Tracey Martin, as well. But we have now what we have, because we have just voted down any other amendments apart from the Minister’s. This bill comes into force on 1 February 2013, instead of 1 November 2012. That is as it is.

It is my very clear hope that Callaghan Innovation can rise above the shambolic and undirected process that has surrounded this bill and can, in fact, do what it is meant to do in relation to other agencies we have—and those relationships will have to be tested and hammered out a wee bit because of the lack of thought and time that has gone into this bill—and that it is able to work cooperatively with Crown research institutes and other existing scientific and innovation organisations to provide some kind of knitted together, some kind of directed, and some kind of purposeful future for science and development in New Zealand. We have clever scientists in this country, we have clever industrialists, we have clever workers, and it is only going to be by the combination of all of those three that we are ever going to get the sort of lift in our economy that everybody in this House aspires to. A little bit more thought, a little bit more time, a bit more vision that was more detailed in its application would have assisted here. However, I wish Callaghan Innovation, under this bill, which comes into effect on 1 February 2013, every success for the benefit of New Zealand. Thank you.

I am pleased to take a final call on the Advanced Technology Institute Bill, which is an unfortunate bill, as we said earlier. It could have been much improved by the amendments that were offered. Sadly, that opportunity has been refused.

The title change of the bill to the Callaghan Innovation Bill—we certainly supported the Minister of Science and Innovation’s amendment to that, because we think it is appropriate that there should be a legacy to an extraordinary man. But we have a genuine concern—and this is not to make a political point, frankly. The responsibility now lies with this Government to make sure that this organisation is something actually worthy of the man. With 20/20 hindsight we can look back and see that it was an unfortunate decision some years ago to attach the name of one of our greatest war heroes, Charles Upham, double VC recipient, to a naval vessel that was intended to be a service vessel for the navy and do good work but, sadly, proved entirely unfit for purpose and ended up carting oranges around the world, if I recall correctly. It would be most unfortunate if this organisation also turns out to be a lemon, and there is a real danger of that, given the way it has been structured and the extraordinarily hasty process of its establishment. Indeed, the responsibility rests squarely on this Government to make sure that this organisation is worthy of the name that is being attached to it.

The innovation part—it is rather an odd name, actually: Callaghan Innovation. It almost cries out for another word, like “institute” or “centre” or something. In itself—“I work for Callaghan Innovation.”—it is a peculiar choice. I do wonder at the decision behind that, but so be it. Innovation actually is the role of the business sector and of the research centres, the universities, and the Crown research institutes. We always pictured that this would not necessarily be a centre for innovation as such. The role of this organisation, as such an organisation, ought to be a networking role of joining dots, linking talent with demand, linking supply and demand, joining and facilitating discussions, and building relationships between the scientific and research capacity we have and the business sector, where the skill is to turn the good idea into dollars for the country—the weightless exports, the high-tech manufacturing, the stuff that we really do need into the future for economic, social, and environmental benefits.

So it is a peculiar choice of name. It does reflect, I think, a bit of the muddled thinking of this Government as it has gone in such great haste to develop this organisation. The commencement date is 1 February, a very few months away. Sadly, the fact that this bill is now passing into law—or presumably will this week or certainly next week, with the third reading, whenever that is scheduled—means a very unhappy Christmas, I suspect, for many of the people currently employed by Industrial Research Ltd, the status of which will be amended. Clearly, as we know from the Cabinet paper, the long-term intention is to disestablish Industrial Research Ltd.

Once again, we have a major centre of scientific and technical expertise, and the people in that organisation now feel that their future is under threat. Many of them have no idea where they will end up. They do not know whether they want to be part of this new group. They do not know whether there will be a role for them—similarly with the New Zealand Transport Agency and, indeed, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. There will be people thinking “OK, what does this mean for me and my future?”.

This is a time when we should be making science and technology an extremely attractive career path for young New Zealanders and not-so-young New Zealanders. The fact that this is being done so quickly, with so little clarity around the transitional arrangements, will mean for those individuals and those people collectively that we are actually undermining that. It is very difficult, in fact. I am a great believer in science. I have a science degree. It is very difficult—really, honestly—to say to a young New Zealander “You should make your future in science.” You have to qualify that by saying “Don’t expect a smooth run. It will be a rocky ride, the way things are here.” But, nevertheless, that seems to be the way they are going.

So we do think that if the process had been allowed to be worked through in a more appropriate way, and if the commencement date was extended out, there would be no particular disadvantage. Work is being done. Very positive, productive work is already happening with the various organisations I mentioned earlier, like UniServices, the WaikatoLink, and the Economic Development Agencies of New Zealand group, which are doing extraordinarily good work in terms of linking up the demand and supply, and linking up the ideas and the people who can turn ideas into money. There is no need for such haste, and it is a great shame for those people who will be left, sadly, over the Christmas break. Kia ora.

Can I pay my respects to Sir Paul Callaghan as well, and congratulate his family on his being honoured in this way—having this institute named after him. I do agree with the last speaker, David Clendon, that the new name—Callaghan Innovation—does seem to hang and might be better with another word at the end of it.

The point that I would like to develop a little in this debate on the title is one that David Clendon and other speakers spoke to earlier, which is this mix of the new Callaghan Innovation institute—I will add the word—being both a funder and a provider, and the difficulty that that poses. I do not propose to speak for a long time. I will, though, record some comments that were made by submitters to the Education and Science Committee. One is from Professor John Raine, who is the pro vice-chancellor of innovation and enterprise at the Auckland University of Technology and who has been chair of the Powering Innovation review, which, as I understand it, is a review that has been conducted on behalf of the Government. He said that he was not comfortable with contestable funding being, effectively, allocated by this new body, and said: “I have real concerns about putting contestable funding streams from the TechNZ funding programme into ATI. In the Powering Innovation report recommended changes that would really drive collaborative behaviour in the R&D and innovation eco-system [were put forward].” Then he says in respect of the model: “I think the model that would get best buy-in from the other R&D organizations”—which are going to have to be cooperating—“would be to place a relative minimum of core funding in the organisation but working with a big pool of industry-linked project funding held at MBIE which ATI can access through partnered projects with other R&D institutions plus industry partners.”

That tension, if it is not properly resolved—and it is not resolved through this legislation—could effectively cause this model to fail. Unless this tension is properly resolved, you will not get cooperation between this new institute and the other research, science, and technology providers, both in other publicly funded institutions and in industry. I think it is sad that because the submission period was so short there were virtually no submissions from other private sector research and development organisations—organisations like Scott Technology, a company based in my city that provides those services to the private sector. If those organisations thought that through this legislation there would be less money available for them to advance these projects—which I am sure they do very effectively, both cost-effectively and also innovatively—and if they thought that they were going to be competing with a Crown-funded organisation that not only has a leg-up in respect of its own activities but could control what funding went to others, they would be concerned.

This was amplified also by a submission that came from Lincoln Ventures Ltd, which is an organisation that sits outside Lincoln University but is related to it. The submission said: “ATI should not compete with existing RS&T providers, but should facilitate their interaction with business … ATI should not then preferentially grant itself or its HVM clients RS&T funding which would allow them to out compete existing RS&T providers. If incentives are to be deployed”—I continue to quote from the submission—“to encourage investment in R & D by HVM companies, these incentives should also be available to existing RS&T providers, at no more of a compliance cost than that which will be determined in house and be available for ATI researchers.” Otherwise, we risk creating, I think, confusion, and we will go backwards—actually, not so much create confusion but will just be setting up structures that are less efficient—

I want to take just a short call on this bill, the Advanced Technology Institute Bill, and speak to the title. I think this is a nice way to round up this legislation, and, like previous speakers, and like my colleague David Parker, I want to acknowledge Sir Paul Callaghan and his family and the way in which he is being memorialised, with the naming of this institute after him. I think it is incredibly important, and I think there is no one in this Chamber who does not acknowledge the contribution that Sir Paul has made to thinking in this country, both as a scientist and as someone who has thought very deeply about the role and the place of science and research in the New Zealand economy.

One of the things I want to reflect on is Sir Paul’s relationship with the Royal Society of New Zealand. Of course, Sir Paul was at one time the president of the academy council of the Royal Society of New Zealand. He was a scientist of some note, not just an economic thinker, who published over 240 articles in peer review journals. We cannot underestimate the brilliance of this man in his own field of academic discipline. In 2001 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, and in 2005 he was awarded the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Rutherford Medal, a very high honour to be awarded from the Royal Society of New Zealand. Then, of course, in 2008 he was awarded a James Cook Fellowship, one of the highest honours to be awarded by the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Therefore, it was with great sadness for me personally to read the Royal Society of New Zealand’s submission on this legislation, and I want to enter in the Hansard just one paragraph from that submission, where it says: “The ongoing uncertainty surrounding the ATI, removal of a research focus, and the implication of large scale staff relocation, all risk putting the personnel situation of the new institute in jeopardy. This level of upheaval puts at risk important research skill and capability, if expertise is unable to transition it will be lost overseas.” To me this is really sad, because one of the things I know that Sir Paul Callaghan knew was that one of our greatest resources in this country, and one of our greatest potentials, is the minds of our people, our personnel capability, and our ability to come up with innovative and brilliant concepts that we can use to form the basis of our economy. And here we have an organisation that Sir Paul was so linked to throughout his life—and it acknowledged his brilliance as a scientist in this country—submitting about its fear that the establishment of the Advanced Technology Institute in its current form would actually lead to a loss of that skill. That is something that we on this side of the House think is a real opportunity lost.

We have argued all the way though that to truly honour Sir Paul Callaghan and the work he has contributed to this country, we need to have this link through to the real research and to real science, and to not have this organisation, Callaghan Innovation, be just a front end for commercialisation. It has to be about research. It has to be about science. We cannot separate the two. They are so inextricably linked, and that is something Sir Paul Callaghan thought. I think that man’s life stands as a testament to the way in which someone who engages in fundamental science can also be at the cutting edge of thinking about commercialisation and how it is that we integrate fundamental science, research, and academic excellence into our economy in New Zealand.

We are pleased Sir Paul is being honoured, but on this side of the Chamber we want to make sure that the organisation, the institute, that is established lives up to the name it is having put on its masthead. It is a big name to live up to, and we have to get all these things right. We all need to honour that man, and the greatest way for us to honour him is to make sure we have research excellence at the core of our thinking around innovation. Thank you.

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

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 1 as amended agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Bill reported with amendment.

Report adopted.