Hon Jim Anderton

Member of Parliament for Wigram
Progressive Leader

27 May 2010 Media Statement

“What money? It’s taken this government eighteen months to say it is allocating $3.9 million to research projects. But it hasn’t given anyone a cent yet,” says Jim Anderton MP for Wigram.

The Primary Growth Partnership replaced the Labour-Progressive government’s Fast Forward Fund which would have allocated $2 billion worth of funding for research and development in the primary sector.

$700 million of that was already in the bank, but was taken back into government coffers, and replaced with $30 million, allocated to the new Primary Growth Partnership (PGP)

This week the PGP, which has so far failed to fund any research projects during the first 18 months of this National led government, announced that it had approved funding for three projects, worth about $3.9 million per year for five years.

“Don’t hold your breath. Apparently there is still a pile of paper work and bureaucracy to go through before even a time line for releasing the funding is agreed.

“This is the problem when you tie up innovative business investment decisions in red tape. The Fast Forward Fund was part ‘owned’ by the private sector. They made the decisions about who and how funding would be distributed in partnership with the government. An 18 month delay would have been totally unacceptable when it has resulted in such small scale decisions.

“Now, even when decisions are made to proceed, businesses are being told to sit back and be patient while ‘milestones’ are being delivered and strategy papers written to help decide when to release funds. Here’s a few ‘milestones’ the National government might want to mark:

$700 million for R&D replaced with $30 million per year,
$5 million of that is deducted to fund the National Center for Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research (not to help develop primary sector production),
A further $2 has gone to fund the administrative costs of the PGP, and
About $3.9 million is finally allocated to R&D projects, but wait - there’s a still a delay while more paper work is done.

“That leaves about $20 million unallocated. Going on the past 18 months, it will take them about ten years to allocate the rest of this miserly funding,” says Jim Anderton.

ENDS

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