On Friday, we had Paul Callaghan give a lecture at work about developing New Zealand’s economy so as to not be entirely reliant on commodities. This is perfectly suited our company, given that our raison d’être is to develop technology that can be transferred to Kiwi companies.

For over a century, the New Zealand economy has been based largely on agricultural exports. Unfortunately, returns on those exports have been dropping, and ramping up production is dangerously unsustainable. This translates to diminishing wealth per person, compared to the OECD average, and is becoming a cause for concern. Comparisons were drawn against Australia and lots of graphs were displayed, indicating government investment patterns in science and research. The short summary is that we spend a lot of money on biotechnology and not nearly enough money anywhere else. The former is supported by the recent science funding package that was announced. The latter was supported by statistics. The danger is that our portfolio is hugely unbalanced.

I would be slightly more critical of the presentation of the statistics if the message were phrased differently. Callaghan’s approach to address the imbalance is based on an increase in overall funding to the science sector, rather than displacing existing funding. If the message were different, I would take a closer look at the breakdown of the funding per field. The sector-resolution was low and the audience was never told exactly what was lumped into biotechnology.

Of course, asking for extra funding is hard. Where does the money come from? It’s an election year; promises are of tax cuts in order to buy votes. Bringing research funding up to a new level would mean that some other part of the government’s budget would have to suffer, unless the money were to come from investment firms. Which brings up another problematic point: Kiwis don’t save money – they buy houses and live their lives in debt. Money flows out of the country and goes to develop other international economies.

The answers aren’t as obvious as they seem: work hard to promote science and engineering; work hard to develop new and cool things; work at changing the funding programs. The first two are possible, but the third is the critical component.