The Taxpayers’ Union is responding to reports that the Government has quietly changed the rules so that the Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF) will now pay Māori researchers 2.5 times the rate of non-Māori, while Pasifika academics will be paid two times the non-Pasifika rate.

Union spokesman Jordan Williams said: “The Government needs to immediately pull back from its latest move to politicise science research on racial grounds."

"The PBRF, in the Government’s own words, was established to encourage and reward excellent research based on performance. It was never meant to be dependent on the ancestry of academics.”

“New Zealand has spent years building up a framework where the quality of research can be objectively assessed across disciplines. The Union has had issues with the PBRF in the past, but the Fund was heading in the right direction – a focus on the science. This latest move undoes all that and takes research in a dangerous direction.”

“The $315-million-a-year fund needs to be laser-focused on the performance part of its name, not ethnicity of researchers."

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