When I was in my last year at high school – some 25+ years ago – there was a documentary on television that Mum and Dad thought I should watch. It was about Ireland’s stunning turn around from a relatively lack lustre economy to a booming info-technology driven place. It must have been well watched because later that same year (1999) New Zealand went to the polls to find a Government that would drive research science and technology – a knowledge economy as Dr Michael Cullen of the successful fifth Labour Government, put it.
Nice words? Definitely. But within months of coming to office, Dr Cullen, like the rest of his colleagues seemed to forget that to make science grow here, one must invest in it. Similarly nine years later when the Helen Clark Government left office, the centre-right National-led Government of John Key had spoken of a brighter future with better economic performance. But, again, within a year or two of getting into office, it seems that they too had decided to neglect science, at a time when climate change science was starting to take off, as was the quiet realization that maybe politicians are not so keen on a subject that doesn’t care for political agendas. And indeed, some even frown upon…
It is a sort of undeclared war that few politicians of any stripe are willing to admit exists, and yet nearly all are complicit in it by virtue of their silence. Most countries in the O.E.C.D. spend about 1.6% of their annual G.D.P. on science, research and technology. New Zealand has – for decades – stubbornly failed to lift our expenditure above 0.9-1.0% per annum.
The problem with New Zealand’s attitude is that it is driving many of our smartest researchers to leave the country for Australia, Canada, the United States, United Kingdom – anywhere that views science with a greater respect than our politicians at all levels do. And it is not just our scientists who are discouraged by the attitudes. At school, science – like mathematics, literacy and a heap of other indicators of academic performance – is suffering a slow death by what some might call “a thousand cuts” – small cuts to programmes that individually might seem harmless, but when their net consequences are combined, they become very real.
Those are interspersed with bigger cuts, such as the slashing of staff and funding at the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences.
Ideally we as a nation need to be spending around 2.0% of our G.D.P. per annum on science, research and technology. But before we do that, New Zealand needs to streamline and simplify the application process for grants to fund research. Instead of granting small lump sums in such a diffuse way as to not make tangible progress on any one issue, it would be better to put the bulk of the funding into 3 or 4 areas – environmental science, alternative fuels, natural hazards and biotech or information technology for example.
Fortunately, this is one area where the Government appears to have listened, if the announcement from Dr Shane Reti, Minister for Science Innovation and technology is anything to go by.
Politicians of all stripes talk about wanting a better country for all, yet so many seem to view science as suspect – whenever it does not fit with their agenda, they immediately criticize it and the people doing the research. People who have not had a science exposure at school frown upon it as some make believe work. Some geo-sciences, for example, are viewed as alarmist because the research being conducted is informing communities of hazards in their area, and some who do not understand that forewarned is forearmed – knowing in advance allows precautions to be taken, such as putting latches on cupboards to stop their contents falling out in an earthquake.
But it is much more than this. Some students are lacking a very basic knowledge of chemistry, physics and biology. I am not saying everyone should become a chemist, physicist or biologist, but the lack of professional openings for these professions in New Zealand has seen a decline across them, and related academic research.
Overall though, the attack on science continues. This undeclared “war on science” has been ongoing in New Zealand for some years now. It is ill informed, dangerous and is causing harm to our academic and scientific standing in the global community. Like so many other fields of Government funding suffering under the neoliberal scourge of tax cuts at all costs in return for “trickle down growth” that never happens, science is a victim of poor Government thinking, chronic under investment and suspicion by an ill informed public.
We can do better, and if this nation is going to realize its full potential, we must end this War on Science.
Leftist Kiwi Writes 