How ‘Public’ Will Our Public Research Organisations Be?

Tomorrow is "Day One" for new institutes representing Bioeconomy Science and Earth Science, combining six of the seven current Crown Research Institutes (CRIs). New Zealand Association of Scientists co-Presidents Troy Baisden and Lucy Stewart ask - these are framed as the biggest science system reforms in over 30 years, but how much is actually changing?

“When announced, the public good aspect of the merged organisations was played up, calling them PROs - Public Research Organisations,” says co-President Professor Troy Baisden. “Yet the freshly minted Statements of Core Purpose make it clear the three new organisations are still very much commercially-oriented 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 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). ESR is being rebranded as the Institute for Public Health and Forensic Science, but not merging with any other organisation.

“MBIE have acknowledged that the structure of the CRIs over the past thirty years has not delivered for our economy as intended, but that this doesn’t represent the quality of our researchers,” adds co-President Dr Lucy Stewart. “We agree this far - but we are deeply concerned that these new organisations, faced with ever-tightening funding constraints, will not deliver systemic change. The country’s main funding mechanism for getting research to deliver for the economy and other national outcomes, the Endeavour Fund, is suspending operations for a year. And the 2025 Budget has cut research funding in order to support reform.”

“Improved focus on intellectual property settings associated with investment is one bright spot,” says Prof Baisden, “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. We have not seen any evidence that the new PROs will turn away from this failed path – nor any evidence they will be funded to do so.”

The NZAS has consistently noted that the reform agenda implemented to date based on the SSAG report has pulled very selectively from the report rather than addressing its recommendations holistically.

Dr Stewart says “The approach we're seeing from the Government towards science is similar to focusing on success at marathons by training sprinters to run the last hundred metres as fast as possible. Commercialisation is only successful globally where a solid foundation of public research exists. No path towards such a foundation has been put forward in these reforms.”

Prof Baisden expresses hope, “The best case would be where the two new PROs set to work to make cases for Government to better support them collectively, and collaborations with universities, with stable funding that forms a foundation of at least a quarter of the now abandoned target for R&D to reach 2% of GDP. Without that foundation, we can’t compete with other nations to attract investment and won’t generate spinoff and spillover benefits.”

He concludes “In a worst case, this reform could cause further loss of confidence in the value of investing in science, and then further cuts to funding. For every dollar cut or held back, the EU’s funding agency suggests up to $11 will be lost from the future economy.

“Most likely, "Day One" will mean the institutes continue to get on with business as usual, with some incremental gains from efficiency of scale. Real reform is not on the horizon. Perhaps the biggest mystery is whether our universities, who are still awaiting the publication of two big advisory reports delivered to the government, will also see significant reform in exchange for increased or changed funding, or simply be required to continue on without absorbing the costs of significant change.”

1. https://www.mbie.govt.nz/science-and-technology/science-and-innovation/refocusing-the-science-innovation-and-technology-system/public-research-organisations
2. https://www.mbie.govt.nz/science-and-technology/science-and-innovation/refocusing-the-science-innovation-and-technology-system/reforms-webinars
3. https://ssag.org.nz/first-report/
4. https://scientists.org.nz/news/13454342
5. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_1115
6. https://uag.org.nz/

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