Tony Gibson: Engineering a better future

Opinion

All nations desire economic growth to raise the standard of living, eliminate poverty and create wealth. Since the industrial revolution, all economic growth has depended to a large degree on technology and innovation.

In recent years, Ireland and Singapore and, perhaps to a lesser extent, Finland have epitomised technology based economic growth. This has been ensured by producing a stream of graduates in the appropriate disciplines while at the same time governments have created business and market conditions which have enabled wealth creation using targeted skills.

New Zealand is well endowed with lawyers and accountants, while being very poorly off in terms of graduate engineers. Such graduates are specifically educated to develop and apply a wide range of scientific and pragmatic knowledge to meet human needs. It is they who have invented the cell-phone, the computer, the MRI scanner, and the space shuttle. They design the roads, bridges, sewer systems, building structures and water supply. But perhaps even more importantly, for efficient decision-making, we need this knowledge represented in the governance structures.

In Britain, a study of the directorates of its top 100 companies showed that 16 per cent of directors had a first degree in engineering, while 15 per cent had a first degree in science. In New Zealand only 6 per cent of all graduates are professional engineers. This compares with 13 per cent as the OECD average. About a third of China's 1.4 million graduates each year are engineers. On an equivalent basis New Zealand should be producing 4000 first year engineering students each year, not the 1000 we currently produce.

Before the 1984 Rogernomics reforms, government was well involved with technology-based infrastructure to underpin wealth creation, particularly through the Ministry of Works and its highway construction, and the New Zealand Electricity Department with its world-renowned generation and distribution system. The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research produced much useful material.

With the translation of these departments into the private sector (an absolutely necessary move which eliminated much of the inefficiency which had grown around the technology) governments in New Zealand have lost touch with the importance of these disciplines for wealth creation.

In many government departments it has become rare to find both authority and knowledge in the same person. Instead of seeking technical advice, those in governance often seek legal advice centred in process, protocol and minimisation of liability. Decisions are made out of fear and to create a defensible position rather out of the leadership and vision required to build a nation. This is not a recipe for growth and innovation.

The recent Labour Government in particular has clearly failed to understand how technological and professional engineering education, in the context of appropriate market reforms (including taxation strategy) can lift a nation.

In the context of lower corporate taxes to attract businesses to move into New Zealand we can build the mix of business, education and infrastructure which generates economic growth. From such a growth engine we will have the money, as Ireland now has, to fund health, law and order, welfare and defence.

New Zealand will rapidly return to the top half of the OECD, and at a high position within that top half, if we begin to implement these policies.

* J.A. (Tony) Gibson is a chartered professional engineer and former Year 2000 President of the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand.