Financial Review Debate - Agriculture - Jim Anderton MP

The question for the government to answer is this: where in this appropriation has it made decisions that will achieve a step change in this country’s economic performance?

The answer is ‘Nowhere’?

There are two hugely contrasting approaches to the New Zealand economy in this House.
Both sides of this House know our economy has to do much better.

Over that side, the government’s entire programme for transforming New Zealand is to increase GST and drop the top tax rate for the most affluent New Zealanders – and yes, build a cycleway! That’s it. That’s their one shot.

And over this side - there is a long list of ideas to foster innovation, create jobs and increase incomes. Research and development, investment in science and skills, partnerships with the sectors, the businesses, the institutions and the people who can bring great New Zealand ideas to market.

National says it supports them - but this appropriation tells a different story. Where is the R&D investment here?

The government cut $700 million from the New Zealand Fast Forward Fund; that is a total cut of $2 billion in New Zealand’s innovation, and it was already to go when they took office. $700m matched dollar for dollar by industry plus interest earned over 10 years = $2 billion.

The government abolished that and replaced it with a primary partnership that has so far completely failed. Eighteen months have been wasted, and not a single project has been funded – not one cent has been invested. Those are years we will never get back.

I thought when the government axed Fast Forward that it was coasting in neutral.
But it is actually going backwards.

It’s overseeing the axing of over forty jobs at AgResearch. Fifty jobs have already been lost in biosecurity. How is that going to help innovation and science in the most productive and innovative part of our economy? It’s going to reduce future growth.

Our future prosperity and jobs depend on science and innovation, and the sector where innovation and science makes the most difference in New Zealand is the primary sector.
It makes no sense to hack off the jobs of forty scientists.

What does the prime minister say about it? He says the government is "not inclined to step in to save the jobs.” He’s relaxed about it.

The prime minister calls it “a necessary adjustment to deal with the structure of AgResearch as it currently finds itself” because they’ve got “too much capacity in certain areas". That is nothing less than doublespeak.

In the 1980s we heard quotes about “rising unemployment around a falling trend” or when we close post offices and post banks it became not closure but “transferring their resources”, and we are getting the same kind of doublespeak now.

I’ll tell members why AgResearch has too much capacity. It was meant to be working in partnership on research projects that would have been funded by the New Zealand Fast Forward Fund.

The government chopped the science funding, and now, of course, we’re losing the scientists.

The farmers themselves are not inclined to stump up for research in areas like wool because they know the government has sawn them off. They’re not going out there alone when the rug is being pulled out from under them.

So the prime minister says Ag Research has “too much capacity”. That can only be possible if the government thinks there is too much science already being done in New Zealand.

What has this government got against science anyway? It seems to be on a crusade to smash every limb of science, research and innovation in New Zealand. The first thing this government did - the very first policy it came into the House and implemented - was imposing the largest increase in company tax in New Zealand’s history. It targeted, very carefully, our most innovative companies.

By removing research and development tax credits, $700 million was gone over just 3 years for that purpose. Is it any wonder, then, that we are lagging behind in ways that we never envisaged? What was supposed to happen after we came out of the recession – which of course has been worldwide, was that our economic development wheels would be running really fast.

I look through this appropriation for the pro-science policies that have replaced the R&D tax credits. Where are they? Tragically they don’t exist.

John Key still says we will catch up with Australia. Yeah, right! We will catch up with them all alright – sometime never.

ENDS

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