No Christmas cheer for science sector

The Government has provided absolutely no Christmas cheer for the science and innovation sector with no commitment in their Half-Yearly Economic and Fiscal Update for more funding for science and innovation, National’s Science and Innovation Spokesperson Parmjeet Parmar says.

“The lack of any plan or funding is very surprising given the Government’s lofty goal for science spending,” Ms Parmar says.

“They say they want to lift New Zealand’s research and development spending to 2 per cent of GDP – and yet they identify no plans to increase Government spending to assist with that.

“In fact the only thing they’ve done so far is reduce research and development spending by taking money from the Primary Growth Partnership and putting it into shuffling around the desks at the Ministry for Primary Industries.

“The Government needs to get beyond sloganeering and start coming up with real plans for the science and innovation sector.

“They keep falling back on the R&D tax credits but even those hardly rate a mention in the half-year update.

“They have an ambitious target and the clock is ticking.”

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