Tomorrow is "Day One" for new institutes representing Bioeconomy Science and Earth Science, combining six of the seven current Crown Research Institutes (CRIs). While this is said to be the biggest reform in over 30 years, how much is actually changing?

When announced, the public good aspect of the merged organisations was played up, calling them PROs - Public Research Organisations. Yet the freshly minted Statements of Core Purpose make it clear the three new organisations are still very much CRIs, just bigger, with no clear policy to encourage the spinoffs and spillovers that bring big benefits to NZ Inc's bottom line over the internal accounts of the organisations. This leaves us asking if the two bigger new entities (ESR is getting a re-branding, but not merging with any other organisations) will end up feeling more like the supermarket duopoly than the solution to our nation's research needs.

The Bioeconomy Science Institute will combine Plant & Food, AgResearch, Scion (Forest Research Institute), and Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research.

The Earth Science Institute will combine NIWA and GNS Science, and also include Metservice as well as the Measurement Standards Laboratory (formerly part of Callaghan Innovation).

The future for these bodies was discussed in a May Webinar, with MBIE's Iain Cossar pointing out that the structure of our organisations has not delivered for our economy as intended. He says this doesn't reflect the quality of our researchers in the organisations.

We all hope the reform helps – but will it? 

Shortly after the webinar we had an announcement that the main funding mechanism for getting research to deliver for the economy and other national outcomes, the Endeavour Fund, would suspend accepting proposals for a year. And the 2025 Budget confirmed a pattern that research funding would be reprioritised, continuing if aligned with the Government's economic agenda, but cut in other areas in order to reprioritise funds to the management of the reform. 

MBIE correctly points out that there is no way (except for contestable funding rounds) for the system to prioritise funding. While already making reprioritisations, the PM's Science and Technology Advisory Council is supposed to be the mechanism for doing so, yet lacks expertise on climate change, hazards and environment.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE) is one of the critics of the approach being taken to the reform, taking the remarkable step of penning a letter to the Prime Minister. Since the current PCE set up the present system as a minister in the National Government of the 1990s, his criticism carries particular weight. Select committee proceedings reveal the position of environmental research has been discussed but is unresolved. In short, the needed funding to better manage the demands our economy makes on the environment, particularly in the face of climate change, is not aided by the split across the two new CRIs. From my perspective, key issues such as erosion and wetlands require knowledge, skills and technology from both institutes, but their institutional incentives could still favour holding intellectual property for commercial gain rather than sharing for the public good.

Improved focus on intellectual property settings associated with investment is one bright spot. But IP is a small part of a much bigger problem leading to suspicions this change is driven by what appears to be a false hope. Our system has mostly failed miserably at commercialisation, with only spotty successes. Instead, up to 50% of revenue to Crown Research Institutes is derived from commercial consultancy. Thinking that commercialisation will somehow save the day has been a dangerous distraction that everyone inside CRIs has seen many times over the last 30 years, and was explicitly called out in the Science System Advisory Group report delivered in August last year. This report, which provided the main hope that this sequel to previous science reforms would go far better than the last, was not released until January when the CRI mergers and IP reforms were announced. The reform agenda implemented to date has pulled very selectively from the report.

The SSAG report went to great length to point out that no research institutions globally have ever been able to rely on commercialisation as a main source revenue. Instead, national success requires investing about 0.6% of GDP into a public foundation in the research system. Put another way, that's a bit more than a quarter of our now abandoned target to lift R&D spending to 2% of R&D, and that our failure to first fund the foundation is why we've given up on that target.

We're currently dropping to about 0.3% by my accounting and about $300m behind 2019 levels of support for foundational public science, after adjusting for inflation. The irony is that the government is now reprioritising cuts to that foundation of public research funding in order to support management of change, attracting investment, and even setting up the gene tech regulator.

The most quoted commentary likened the approach the government was taking to trying to squeeze more juice from previously squeezed lemons, rather than trying to grow more lemons.

The SSAG report (PDF footnote 15, p31) ) favours an analogy where a hydroelectric power station is being asked to generate more power without regard to inflows and reservoir levels. 

Whether we're squeezing lemons or running down our reservoirs, my view remains that the reason we have the largest "valley of death" for commercialisation is not IP or the structure of our system, but the problem that plagues all our crumbling infrastructure deficits. We simply don't invest in the needed foundation of skills, equipment and connections that would allow us to bridge from existing knowledge into the science and innovation that solves big problems. We also aren't succeeding in getting our science system to support our policy and legislation as it should, nor are we getting the improvements in productivity we once did. 

Yet, the government's messages and reprioritisation continues to double down on commercialisation messages. Discussing that on Nine-to-Noon, NZAS Co-President Lucy Stewart points likens the approach we're seeing as focusing on training sprinters to run the last hundred metres of a marathon. 

The cost of change appears to be very high – if the rates senior and principal scientists charge everyone from the government to clients is any guide. Trying to justify this to a Parliamentary Select Committee, the GNS Science Chief Executive expresses confusion that it is ok to pay over $400 an hour for a lawyer but not a scientist. But lawyers might take home most of this, while scientists watch increasingly efficient institutions take three quarters or more, up from about half which was the norm 15 years ago and remains true for universities. How can we not see the model for reinvesting in CRI buildings, equipment and all the work and management that forms a foundation for 'chargeable time' is simply broken and spiralling out of control, with the evidence being that the chargeout rates are so far outside the sectors norms both nationally and internationally that collaborations have become nearly impossible to arrange equitably, and most scientists at the beginning and middle of their careers are losing hope that they can find ways forward.

Perhaps "Day One" will mean the institutes continue to get on with business as usual, with some incremental gains. Perhaps the biggest mystery is whether Universities, who also have had two big advisory reports delivered to government, will also see significant reform in exchange for increased or changed funding, or simply be allowed to continue on without the cost of significant change.

-Troy Baisden (NZAS Co-President) 

The NZAS Presidents welcome enquires -- President(at)scientists.org.nz

We also have a press release on this topic

Also, check out our page with key documents from past science reforms, back to 1986.

We are pleased to again support a survey of scientists and technologists working in Aotearoa New Zealand. Similar surveys have been carried out through NZAS in 1996, 2000 and 2008, forming an important chronicle of changes in our scientific workforce. Those working within science and research organisations should receive an invitation to participate in the survey through employers and membership-based organisations. We strongly encourage everyone to respond. 

Here is the formal invitation to participate in the survey. 

The New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS) is carrying out a survey of scientists and technologists in New Zealand to develop a comprehensive understanding of the science and technology environment in New Zealand by exploring the views, characteristics, careers and demographics of scientists and technologists who work in New Zealand. The last survey of this kind was conducted in 2008 and given the many changes that have occurred over the past 17 years this survey is well overdue. The survey can be completed using the following link:

https://canterbury.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_exImr5JW2FcwrRA

Participation in the survey is voluntary and all responses are treated confidentially. 

You are also welcome to forward this link and message on to other scientists and technologists in New Zealand.

If you have any questions about the research, please contact: Michael Edmonds michael.edmonds@canterbury.ac.nz. This study has been reviewed and approved by the University of Canterbury Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC). If you have concerns or complaints about this research, please contact the Chair of the HREC at human-ethics@canterbury.ac.nz.

We thank Michael Edmonds for his work making this possible, and also Prof Jack Sommer for once again contributing to the delivery of the survey he'd previously administrated on his visits.

Read the release here or find the PDF version on our releases page

NZAS Co-Presidents Lucy Stewart and Troy Baisden have made initial comments on the Budget released by the coalition government this week, highlighting the ‘re-prioritisation’ of frontline research funds to pay for the government’s science reforms. Pre-Budget commentary has emphasised that Aotearoa New Zealand’s research and science system has been under-funded by successive governments for decades and that meaningful new funding is needed if we want to achieve the same level of science and innovation as other small advanced economies. The need for funding from government was also a key theme of the first Science System Advisory Group report released in January 2025. 

Prof Troy Baisden laments, “Following last year’s nothing-burger budget for science, this year edges toward a black hole budget for the research system. Many areas of research may now be heading across a threshold where there’s no escape and they can no longer rebuild what is being lost.“

Dr Lucy Stewart comments, "The Government signalled that there was unlikely to be new spending for research and science in this Budget. They have also, in the past six months, demonstrated a willingness to take funding away from areas of research that they do not see as priorities. This was most clearly illustrated by the changes to the Marsden Fund in December 2024, which removed social sciences and humanities from the eligible areas of research. In recent weeks they have also announced that the Endeavour Fund will not award new funding in 2026 and will only offer extensions to current projects which are considered to be ‘value for money’ and to align with the government’s priorities. 

At the same time, they have committed to significant reforms to the science system including the establishment of three - or perhaps four - new Public Research Organisations, two created by merging existing Crown Research Institutes, as well as the establishment of a new regulator for genetic technologies. These reforms will cost money. In this Budget, we learn that they propose to pay for them by cutting yet more money from our core research funds - primarily the Health Research Fund, which has $17 million less budgeted in the 2025/2026 financial year, as well as the Catalyst Research fund, which loses $12 million. The Strategic Science Investment Fund is also hit by significant ‘reprioritisation’ of funds forecast across the next three years, and cuts of approximately $5 million are proposed for the Marsden Fund in 2026/2027 and 2027/2028 as well. The Marsden Fund has effectively not received any new funding for nearly a decade, so it is already very hard-hit by inflation. 

As I said last year, I expect to see more job losses across the sector before the end of the year. Many researchers depend entirely on contestable funding to support their jobs and less contestable funding available means fewer researchers will be employed.

I do note that there are small but relatively meaningful increases budgeted for funds supporting the development of mātauranga Māori researchers and organisations, PhD students working on applied science, and early and mid career researcher fellowships. This is good to see. However, at the same time the research system that these researchers are part of is being torn down around them. Small increases cannot make up for that."

Prof Troy Baisden adds: "Today’s budget continues to double down on a pattern spanning four decades, in which New Zealand’s governments have been world leaders in choosing not to invest in the future. We appear determined to fall behind peer nations with our investment in research, science, innovation and technology. This is increasingly true for universities, which continue to see the increasing support they saw across the decade to 2020 reversed.

There’s almost no good news, with significant areas now having gone many years without any adjustment for the pulse of inflation. Areas we depend on such as GeoNet, which helps us understand earthquakes and tsunamis as they affect us, are seeing budget cuts of around 13%. The significant research programmes supported through the Ministry of Primary Industries are not immune, with reductions of $25 million across areas such as sustainable land management and greenhouse gas emissions reductions. We’re seeing not just funding cuts in the future, but also ‘efficiencies’ where underspending has occurred relative to signalled allocations. Relatively small new initiatives in space science, touted as an important new area while Judith Collins was Minister, appear to be petering out to nothing.

The Table of Estimates produced with Budget 2025 also allows us to look back, from an estimate for the year just ended to finalised funding in previous years. Funding for the entire tertiary education sector has flatlined then declined, following the period when Government helped stabilise the sector during the pandemic’s impacts. Up until 2019 the sector was growing consistently. Although the current budget is consistent with the pre-2019 trend in dollar terms, it doesn’t account for the recent pulse of inflation. Institutional budgets are undergoing increasing stress and provide little solace to top research teams who miss out or are now deemed ineligible for contestable research funding such as the Marsden fund.  A very disappointing case is the significant cuts to the Health Research Fund, slowing the front of a pipeline into an innovation ecosystem where New Zealand has global companies.

When last year’s budget emerged with cuts to science, we noted that our hope for this year sat with Sir Peter Gluckman’s Science System and University Advisory Groups (SSAG and UAG) to make a case for future funding. The first SSAG report made a very strong case, in part noting that we should focus more on the foundation that core public research investment provides. When carried out with sufficient quality, core public research investment of about 0.6% of GDP ensures that additional investments by government and business have strong payoffs. These payoffs across the economy have been tallied as an average of $11 for every dollar invested in Europe, or $5–20 for every dollar invested in Australia. The government is calling for that further investment, but we continue to undermine the foundation that’s needed for these payoffs to be reliable. 

This year’s budget allows us to update our analysis showing how far short of the 0.6% of GDP target we fall. We advocate for alternative budgets that initially restore core public research investment to inflation-adjusted 2019 levels and then proceed to the 0.6% target over 5 years.” 

Contact: NZAS co-Presidents: Prof Troy Baisden and Dr Lucy Stewart president@scientists.org.nz

NZAS has sent made submissions to the final phase of the Science System Advisory Group. In addition its full detailed four page submission (available on our Submissions page), the NZAS Co-Presidents have provided a brief submission outlining their view of what successful reform science system reform should look like.  

The overview is reproduced here:

Thank you for seeking this second round of input on the future of our research and science system. We broadly agree with and support the first Science System Advisory Group report and look forward to your final report and hope that it will have the desired impact.

The nature and length of the Phase 2 submissions has led us to submit a brief overarching commentary separately. In doing so, we point to differences in emphasis and sequencing in how we think the most effective solutions to the crises in our research system can be structured. We also briefly highlight our key points provided in response to your question 4.

First, solutions must focus on funding people - it is our overwhelming position that many of the major problems with our system can be addressed by understanding how to stabilise the role of our researchers. The responsiveness and predictability of the current “full-cost” system links all costs to researcher’s time. This must be a central consideration in converting reform to the intended outcomes. At the same time, the system has failed our researchers by making their committed time precarious and fragmented. It saddles them with internationally anomalous overheads, which appear to be escalating through 400% in some CRIs making everything from Fast-Start Marsdens to the future design of the Antarctic Science Platform increasingly unworkable. The anomalous overheads can be attributed to two simple factors, and the inability of our institutions and ministry to understand and control them. They are the hyper-competitive funding system and tendency to see commercialisation and consultancy as the dominant future sources of funding.

It is possible to put efficient, effective delivery of science back in the hand of scientists, by funding a large proportion of their time to deliver accountably on missions identifiable within research communities and their stakeholders. This is a scale at which important issues can be addressed, but much smaller than the scale of National Science Challenges or the failed Priorities process under Te Ara Paerangi. At this scale, reputation and trust are palpable and efficient reporting can populate the neglected goal of effective monitoring through a national Research Information System. What is funded should be funded stably and appropriately for what is needed. Fellowships can play an important interim role in stabilising costs and people at the same time, particularly in areas where rebuilding independence, trust, mobility and connectivity is needed. The support for Māori researchers to succeed permeably between mainstream institutions as well as wānanga and iwi/Māori institutions without being asked to do a ‘’double duty” can be used to test proposed solutions.

Success should rebuild connectivity between PROs, universities and business. It will also continue to attract and build excellent researchers by realising that better institutions will empower their researchers to look after the ideas and knowledge represented by the analogy of a reservoir built and maintained through core public research funding, which then flows through to economic outcomes and other benefits to society. 

We also met with the Minister in recent weeks. Keep an eye here - we'll be posting our notes and communications shortly. As you can imagine – what we've discussed with the Minister echoes what we said in the submission.

Read the full release on our Press Releases pages.

Following on our initial expert reactions, and media appearances, NZAS now has a further press release and statement on yesterday's release of the Science System Advisory Group Report  and announcements of changes to the research system linked to economic growth and investment.

Find it as a PDF on our Press Releases page, or reproduced below.

Science System Advisory Group report receives only selective engagement from Government

The New Zealand Association of Scientists Co-Presidents are hopeful yet vigilant in their reaction to the reforms in the science sector announced yesterday. They express concern that ‘following consideration’ of the Science System Advisory Group’s (SSAG’s) long-delayed first report, the Government has elected to focus on big-picture restructures and commercial incentives while leaving aside other fundamental changes suggested in the report. This is despite the report’s executive summary warning that ‘Our recommendations should not be seen as a smorgasbord: to have an effective and productive system, changes in the SI&T system must be managed as a set.’^[1]”

After the most destructive year for the science system in decades, NZAS Co-President Troy Baisden says: “The changes proposed by the government are not individually without merit, but as a set do not line up with an logical or evidence-based theory of change to deliver and implement effective reforms. Merging CRIs to reduce competition and improve coordination is a well-supported idea, but other well-supported ideas such as an independent Ministry for science and a National Research Council appear to have been left by the wayside. Selling changes driven by commercialisation can’t work when we are falling below the thresholds of public investment in a foundation of research which the SSAG report highlights as critical for incentivising business investment in science, innovation and technology. 

The report repeatedly laments the problem of inflated, unrealistic valuations for commercialisation of science and specifically warns  that “the naive idea persists … that exploitation of IP [intellectual property]” within institutions “can generate significant income – this is just not the case globally.”^[2]

While further work is intended, the long delay and incomplete announcements associated with this report signals likely difficulty with ongoing implementation, including creating an integrated research system across universities and the newly amalgamated Public Research Organisations. Ensuring social licence in the bio-economy sector as gene tech re-enters our landscape, and building in the social sciences and humanities work needed to deliver outcomes around hazards, climate change, and health are missing, as is a clear picture for the place of conservation and environmental research and the role of the growing Māori success in the bio-economy.

Instead the focus in the government’s announcements is on magical versions of ‘value for money’, mirages of investment and economic benefit, while asserting that our under-funded scientists are not delivering enough benefits to the country. While there are real inefficiencies and pointless competition within the system that can and should be addressed, the reality is that New Zealand produces world-class research on tiny budgets, and with growing inefficiency as a result of underfunding and long-term uncertainty. If we further diminish our research system’s role in supporting a productive economy, we may lose our ability to rebuild and remain a ‘small advanced economy.’^[3]

There is a risk of increasing the already high overhead on every dollar within institutions that goes to science, feeding more management and pitching of commercialisation. Directing scientists to focus even harder on squeezing more from existing pools of knowledge by focussing on impossible or unlikely commercial revenue and private industry partnerships will diminish both foundations and pipelines of knowledge and human capital.

All those who have seen the sector chase overvalued potential commercialisation over the last 25 years should be clear that the minister’s unrealistic commercialisation hype over the past year, echoed again on Morning Report today,^[4] has mainly led to escalating overheads in our institutions – to the extent that we undermine innovation pipelines, business partnerships and foreign investment.^[5] The declaration that these significant changes must be managed by re-allocating existing budgets is likely to mean further job losses in order to fund projects like setting up an entirely new advanced technology research organisation. Efficient change is possible, but only by focussing on good architecture and placing experts back in charge of critical decisions and processes as the SSAG recommends.”^[6]

Co-President Dr Lucy Stewart adds, “Sir Peter Gluckman’s report explicitly recommends increased public investment in science, a focus on developing a skilled workforce which will see strong involvement from Māori and Pasifika, and displays understanding that humanities and the social sciences, including mātauranga Māori, have ‘multiple roles in enhancing our country’s well-being’^[7]. It emphasises the need to view research funding as an investment rather than a cost. None of these elements are reflected in the proposed reforms, or in the announcement which is focused on making the science sector justify the inadequate funding it already receives. It is a hugely limited view of what is a considered and thorough set of recommendations that, if fully implemented as the report recommends, could re-build the fragile foundations of our research and science system.” 

“In particular we wish to draw attention to the difference between the report’s recommendations for a Science Innovation and Technology Advisory Council and those announced today. The report envisions a council bringing together politicians and distinguished scientists, as well as those with business and innovation expertise, to make long-term decisions about the direction of research in Aotearoa New Zealand. It also mentions the need for Māori representation, as is appropriate. The released cabinet papers describe a council to be drawn from people with “deep and broad experience in business, impact and commercialisation of SI&T and strong connections with SI&T” and do not mention any involvement from a Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor (PMCSA). In contrast the SSAG report envisions the PMCSA as the Council’s executive officer and a continuing source of scientific advice to the Prime Minister and Cabinet. We note yet again that the role of PMCSA was left vacant when Dame Juliet Gerrard departed at the end of her five-year term in mid-2024, and funding for the office has since been wound up and staff let go. The announcement today appears to confirm the government no longer sees a role for a PMCSA. We think this epitomises the government’s attitude towards science and the science system. Scientists are only useful if they can make money – but let’s not risk them giving any advice we don’t want to hear.” 

Prof Baisden concludes, “The NZAS has one piece of advice for the government – take to heart what the valuable report you commissioned says. We can do this right, and do it efficiently.” 

^[1] Science System Advisory Group (SSAG) Report: An architecture for the future (Gluckman et al, 2024), page 12, paragraph 8. 

^[2] SSAG Report, page 60 paragraph 211.

^[3] SSAG Report, page 30 paragraph 74 and 75

^[4]https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018971960/science-innovation-and-technology-minister-judith-collins-on-changes-to-science-sector

^[5] SSAG Report, p 20 paragraph 27, and p 40 paragraph 130

^[6] SSAG Report, p12 paragraph 9

^[7] SSAG Report, page 8, paragraph 12. 

NZAS identified aspects of our aims and purpose that justified a strong, succinct submission opposing the Bill on the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. Go to our submissions page for the formal submission..

NZAS has submitted to phase 3 of the Universities Advisory Group. See our submissions page for the full document. 

Following significant media coverage and commentary over the past week, the NZAS has put out a formal press release addressing the shock changes to the Marsden Fund Terms of Reference. We roundly deplore these changes which undermine the very purpose of the Fund, threaten the viability of social science and humanities research in Aotearoa New Zealand, and represent political meddling with what was widely considered to be the best-functioning, if underfunded, part of our science and research system. 

We've announced our 2024 Medalists. Please see our Awards page for the details.