By SIMON COLLINS and JOHN ARMSTRONG
The Prime Minister will make a crucial election-year pitch for the high ground on economic policy tomorrow by releasing her long-awaited national innovation strategy.
A year in the making, "Growing an Innovative New Zealand" marks an unofficial return to a more hands-on approach of picking economic winners and will be the centrepiece of Helen Clark's keynote speech opening the new parliamentary year.
Her statement will be accompanied by a lengthy document pushing ideas on how to develop and attract high-growth, high-value export industries.
Tomorrow's document will set only a framework for policy, and will not include any dollars. Nor will there be any tax changes.
Despite that, the Prime Minister is punting on the framework blunting Opposition leader Bill English's claim that Labour lacks an economic vision.
However, National has one advantage - it is not committed to pouring $2 billion a year into a superannuation fund.
This frees cash for National to cut the company tax rate and spend more money on direct assistance to export industries.
The Government's innovation framework will identify three priority sectors for future support: biotechnology, information and communications technology (ICT) and "creative industries" with an emphasis on design.
The framework, in the form of a 50 to 60-page booklet, represents the Government's long-awaited response to last August's Catching the Knowledge Wave conference, the Science and Innovation Advisory Council's (SIAC) draft framework published at the conference, and reports by LEK Consulting on attracting "talent" and by Boston Consulting on attracting foreign investment.
The LEK and Boston reports will be made public as part of the package.
One minister said privately that the framework would encourage people to ask what choices tomake about where to invest. "It will undoubtedly cause debate."
Christchurch industrialist Sir Angus Tait, a member of SIAC, said the Government was at last willing to get involved after 15 years of a "neither help nor hinder" approach.
"We lay becalmed in terms of industrial and technological progress in that period while the rest of the world was paddling madly.
"There is at least a willingness in this Government to take some of the initiatives and do some of the things that have been done in other parts of the world."
However, the Government still does not want to be seen to be picking winners, and is describing the three priority areas as "horizontal sectors", which will feed into the suc-cess of other industries.
"We could have chosen niche manufacturing, which includes the marine industry, but guess what niche manufacturing needs?" asked Science Minister Pete Hodgson yesterday.
"It needs greater input by ICT - CAD/CAM [computer-aided design and manufacturing] and all of that. And it needs to be better informed by design - the creative industries."
Mr Hodgson said he would "not be so silly" as to identify any areas which might get less Government support under the new approach of targeting resources to the three priority sectors.
"What does it mean in practice? It probably means that as we progress our thinking on foreign investment, we will be looking at foreign investment in those sectors harder than we have before."
Mr Hodgson hinted that this year's Budget would also provide more for Trade NZ to help exporters in the key sectors.
"We have more exporters coming on to Trade NZ's books than was expected, and therefore there needs to be more money."
The Government has also to decide on a recommendation from Boston Consulting that the investment promotion parts of Trade NZ and Industry NZ should be combined into a new stand-alone agency.
Lobby group Business NZ warned that business would be looking for "substance and credibility" in the Prime Minister's package.
Chief executive Simon Carlaw said that while Helen Clark's reported focus on innovation might be attractive in itself, it could not replace policies that gave all businesses clear signals that growth right across the board was now the Government's objective.
Tomorrow's statement will be followed by a conference in Christchurch on March 5-7 which will showcase leading innovators, ranging from start-up biotech companies to wearable arts and bungy jumping.
The conference, Innovate, will be sponsored by the Government and Otago University.
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