KEY POINTS:
The real significance of the $700 million capital fund for innovation in the pastoral and food industries is in danger of being overlooked as fault lines open up around the idea itself, its workability and focus.
Is agriculture the right focus? Should we move to high-tech manufactures or
to weightless economy areas? Will premium foods deliver the returns we seek? Is it more urgent to train more secondary school science teachers? And so on.
They are important issues and deserve close attention. But they miss the larger point of this announcement and attendant reactions.
The package does three things:
* Asserts that New Zealand's future is science dependent.* Matches resource to the rhetoric.
* Marches science into the heart of the nation's political debate.
So the science community, businesses and media need to adjust their mind-sets.
With private sector contributions included, the fund may distribute up to $2 billion over the next 10-15 years.
It comes on top of a tax credit for research and development (R&D) for all sectors from July 1, estimated to be worth $630 million over the next four years.
This level of investment in New Zealand science and dependent sectors is unprecedented. The closest parallel is Vogel's investment in rail in the 1870s.
That move took New Zealand from a scattering of settlements to a nation. Rail created an integrated economy, enabling new products, faster services, more travel. More importantly, it shifted New Zealand from business as usual.
It gave us a sense that we could do different and bigger things; helped shape our values and how we saw our potential domestically and as part of the global community.
The projected scale and duration of this year's investment will enable an outsized contribution to New Zealand, provided we have imaginative thinking and implementation.
The pastoral and food sectors are the focus, but our history is full of science extending its reach well beyond an initial application.
Stainless steel technology grew from dairy industry needs but proved essential in developing our wine industry, benefiting taste characteristics and cost efficiency.
Indications that other areas will also see increases in the May Budget, and that other parties will also spotlight science, is clear recognition of what other economies have known for decades: that big investment in research into science and technology (RS&T) around the needs of a nation, underpins economic, environmental and social welfare.
Emmerson was, I suspect, premature in his cartoon on the day of the announcement. It showed a mousetrap with bait labelled science funding set outside a hole labelled voters.
New Zealand's public did not demand this. Putting science so emphatically upon the national agenda is a bold move by political and business leaders.
It is up to the science community and industry to get the public biting.
Developing a public constituency for the value of science underlay the start in February of Science New Zealand by the nation's Crown Research Institutes.
Inspiring stories arise when 4400 people focus on delivering benefit to New Zealand from world-class (often world leading) basic and applied science and the flow through to practical outcomes.
They show just why science deserves to be alongside health, education, social welfare and financial policy in the national debate.
Science should be part of our national identity: we are, in fact, very good at advancing ideas and delivering results.
The pastoral and foods sector is an ideal candidate to advance the cause for science-based solutions to New Zealand's needs.
It is large, tangible, world leading and makes a big impact. Demonstrate value here and it clears a pathway for the public to back greater investment, and inspire study and career choices in all areas.
Even a 1 per cent increase in an industry delivering $26 billion in exports this year will deliver far more than sunrise industries over many years.
But they can feed off this sector, much as Nokia fed off Finland's forestry?
Moving up the value chain through science can be illustrated by the return per kg on a fish ($26/kg), its omega oil ($457/kg) or a biopharmaceutical ($100,000/kg).
Innovative thinking is coming from some science leaders.
HortResearch and AgResearch are taking collaboration to a new level in food, human nutrition and health.
They are using complementary strengths, including global networks, to take science and commercialisation from the soil to the supermarket. They are working with Auckland University and want to include others.
We are on the cusp of moving New Zealand from a nation in which science is a marginal activity in the public mind (and purse), to being proudly science-based. That shift is our most pressing task, with the prize being New Zealand's wealth and well-being across all areas of the economy, environment and society.
* Anthony Scott is chief executive of Science New Zealand Inc