David Farrar: Royal Society tells Asian and European male researchers to stuff off

Taxpayers are funding 20 Future Leader Fellowships. Each one is worth over $800,000 so we are talking over $16 million from taxpayers.

MBIE has delegated decisions on who gets them to the Royal Society of NZ. And their criteria are:

* At least 20% must go to researchers who are Māori

* At least 10% must identify as Pacific ethnicity

* At least 50% must go to researchers who identify as female

So male Asian and European researchers are discriminated against.

Also interesting is that to qualify to be Maori you need to have Maori ancestry, but for Pacific you only need to identify as Pacific. So could a Fijian Indian qualify? How about someone from Australia?

Surely it is time for the Government to take back science funding to itself, rather than delegate it to a woke leftwing activist group.

David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.