As voting gets underway, here's a compilation of items relevant to the election.
There are some useful election scorecards and Q&A items we'll list below. A surprising and disappointing feature of all of these is silence from National, including the Minister for Science Innovation and Technology, Penny Simmonds. In a 4-part series, Co-President Troy Baisden takes a look at how science hasn't fared well in the last decade, largely as a result of political decisions and policy. Readers are finding this worth a read for the election and thinking about or debating where science needs to go in the future, including for their children. It appears we need to turn the tide on who has been selling science, and how.
Selling Science – Turning the Tide
For considering the directions the science system must head in to rebuild, we continue to recommend our 11-point plan for renewal and also support the recent Royal Society Threats to Science Report and Blueprint
Another very important publication, hot off the press, presents the formal results from the 2025 Survey of New Zealand Scientists and Technologists. Some results are relevant to the election – as it appears the directions the government chose and doubled down on are not supported by the research community. To cherry pick a few of the top 14 findings:
4. Scientists’ confidence in the government is low with only 12.8% believing that New Zealand is heading in the right direction and only 15.1% believing that the government should define the research agenda.
5. Scientists belief that government science strategy is open and inclusive has decreased from 13.6% in 2008 to 5.6%.
9. Three quarters of scientists (74.8%) do not support the removal of funding for the humanities & social sciences from the Marsden fund.
https://doi.org/10.26686/nzsr.v81.10806
Last, as promised above here are the main scorecards or Q&A with the parties.
Save Science Coalition Election scorecard
Science Media Centre Q&A
Royal Society Interviews with Politicians
There was also the SSC/NZAS pre-election forum with Politicians (1-hour video)