budget 2001
Enhancing economic transformation and growth

- $34.35 million package of initiatives for economic and regional development.

- $100 million seed capital investment fund in partnership with the private sector to assist the development of innovative high-tech businesses and increase of $11.6 million in direct research funding.

- Increase of $1.2 million a year, from $0.6 million to $1.8 million, for the business Incubator Support Programme.

- Additional $56 million over the next four years to create more than 17,000 extra industry training places.

- Tertiary Education Commission to be set up to drive improvements in the tertiary sector.

- Increased funding to the tertiary institutions to continue the fees freeze through into the 2002 academic year and $40.6 million over four years for a new Centres of Research Excellence Fund.

- $4.4 million over four years to allow the Industrial Supplies Office to actively seek out tendering opportunities for large public sector projects both here and in Australia.

- Extra funding for the new embassy in Brazil and for Trade NZ.

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>