PoO was puzzled by a headline which said Govt cuts Māori research projects that don’t fit with ‘growth agenda’. Was this intended to dismay, perturb or outrage Newsroom’s audience?
It drew attention to a report which said:
A $5 million boost to a new Māori research fund has been outweighed by the Government siphoning $31m from elsewhere in the sector, pulling the rug from under three projects already years in the making.
The formation of the $10.9 million He Ara Whakahihiko Capability Fund as part of last month’s Budget has been hailed by Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Shane Reti as something that will contribute to the country’s overall performance.
However, the new fund – which was established by merging two pre-existing funds, then topped up using money from other existing research funds – comes while $31m worth of pre-existing funding was taken from work Reti said didn’t fit with his Government’s “growth agenda”.
The three scrapped Māori-led projects aimed to study how rongoā Māori could be implemented in primary care; set up a Māori research platform in the Taranaki area; and lead the first study of the impacts of extractive sand mining through both a mātauranga Māori and western science lens.
The last one mentioned suggests different impacts would be identified – perhaps contradictory ones – by applying a matauranga Māori lens compared with what was mislabelled as a “western science” lens.
Richard Dawkins, Emeritus Professor of the Public Understanding of Science
at the University of Oxford, addressed that mislabelling in a letter to Dr Roger Ridley, at the Royal Society of New Zealand, after reading Jerry Coyne’s long, detailed and fair-minded critique of the contentious move to incorporate Māori “ways of knowing” into science curricula in New Zealand.
Dawkins rebuked the Royal Society for its “frankly appalling failure” to champion science.
Not “Western” science, not “European” science, not “White” science, not “Colonialist” science. Just science. Science is science is science, and it doesn’t matter who does it, or where, or what “tradition” they may have been brought up in. True science is evidence-based not tradition-based; it incorporates safeguards such as peer review, repeated experimental testing of hypotheses, double-blind trials, instruments to supplement and validate fallible senses etc.
The Newsroom article today proceeded to note that the three projects at the centre of its concerns had been funded by an offshoot of what was called Te Pūnaha Hihiko Vision Mātauranga Capability Fund.
The contracts, if they had been approved, were due to begin this month.
But instead of receiving the $31m in expected funding at the start of the month, the project leaders were told their applications would not be progressed, as their work didn’t align with the coalition Government’s vision for the science sector.
Political reporter Fox Meyer did recognise that a complex rearranging of Māori-led science research was part of the Government’s wider science reforms.
Earlier this year, the coalition announced its overhaul of the sector in the hope of research helping drive economic growth.
But his focus was on “Māori” science, knowledge, research – or whatever you might care to call it.
This year’s Budget merged the $5.9m Vision Mātauranga Capability Fund and the $4.5m He Aka Ka Toro Navigation Fund. The new funding stream was refocused on economic growth and renamed the He Ara Whakahihiko Capability Fund, bringing its budget up to $10.9m.
Further funding was drawn from the Strategic Science Investment fund, a platform that funds research into Antarctic science, infectious diseases, space engineering and data science, among other areas. The 2024-25 budget for this fund was $368m.
The new fund will direct $8.6m to its own Māori-led research projects, with $1.9m of the fund dedicated to health research and $400,000 to application and reporting support.
But let’s note that on 4 December, the then Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins, announced the Government “has updated the Marsden Fund to focus on core scientific research that helps lift our economic growth and contributes to science with a purpose”.
“The Government has been clear in its mandate to rebuild our economy. We are focused on a system that supports growth, and a science sector that drives high-tech, high-productivity, high-value businesses and jobs,” Ms Collins says
“I have updated the Marsden Fund Investment Plan and Terms of Reference to ensure that future funding is going to science that helps to meet this goal.”
The new Investment Plan was focused on supporting research that could be of economic, environmental or health benefit to New Zealand. The new Terms of Reference outline that approximately 50 per cent of funds will go towards supporting proposals with economic benefits to New Zealand.
A few weeks later the Government announced a raft of changes it is making to New Zealand’s science, innovation and technology system “to drive economic growth, set a clear direction and position New Zealand for a prosperous future”.
Among the changes, Callaghan Innovation was to be disestablished, with its most important functions transferred to other parts of the science, innovation and technology system.
Then came Budget 2025.
A total of $212 million was cut from the science sector in a Budget which reprioritised existing research funding towards commercially focused science and innovation for all research – not just the Māori sector.
Newsroom’s Fox Meyer was aware of what happened: he told The Detail that “the scale of the cuts is not great for the sector, but it’s also more about the lack of investment”.
He worries the fall-out will include a “brain drain” with our country’s brightest and best scientists and researchers opting to take up positions overseas.
“My connections in the science world – plenty of them – have moved.
“The chief science advisor for the Department of Conservation has moved to Australia … that’s an expert in a cutting-edge field that we have lost to a company in Australia.
“And it’s not the only example of this sort of thing. We invest so much in training up these scientists, and they are very skilled scientists, and then to not give them what they are asking for and what they need, I feel it falls short of our own investment.”
But guess what?
Fox at that time said that, in fairness, “it is not all doom and gloom”.
“So, the positives, there is a new funding pool for Māori-related science, that’s a good thing. There’s the sector-wide report that has come out, which has given us a good look at the sector. We know more now, that’s a good thing. And the chief science advisor has been appointed, and the panel around him has been appointed, that’s a good thing there.”
Science sector leaders had a raft of concerns, nevertheless.
Dr Troy Baisden, Co-President of the New Zealand Association of Scientists, noted that millions of dollars were being withdrawn from the contestable research funds like Marsden ($5.5m cut in 2026/27) and smaller cut from the Health Research Fund.
A cut of $24m would hit the longer term Strategic Science Investment Funding, although it was expected to rebuild its funding over time.
The Endeavour Fund had no cuts but won’t take proposals next year, and the two main funds for Universities, the Performance Based Research Fund and Centres of Research Excellence face another year with no inflation adjustments.
Important areas like GeoNet suffered a cut of about 13%, or $4m.
Dr Lucy Stewart, the other Co-President of the New Zealand Association of Scientists, said the Government had cut frontline research funding in order to pay for its back office science reforms.
Overall, science funding had dropped by approximately $45 million.
But she also said:
“I can however point to one small bright spot – the He Ara Whakahihiko Capability Fund, formerly the Vision Mātauranga Capability Fund, has received a small but meaningful funding boost, as have fellowships for early and mid career researchers. If only the same could be said for the rest of the science and research system.”
Why wasn’t she quoted in Newsroom’s article today?
Oh – and can we expect Māori researchers to take their grievances to the Waitangi Tribunal?
The Treaty of Waitangi is bound to have been breached somewhere.
Bob Edlin is a veteran journalist and editor for the Point of Order blog HERE. - where this article was sourced.
The formation of the $10.9 million He Ara Whakahihiko Capability Fund as part of last month’s Budget has been hailed by Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Shane Reti as something that will contribute to the country’s overall performance.
However, the new fund – which was established by merging two pre-existing funds, then topped up using money from other existing research funds – comes while $31m worth of pre-existing funding was taken from work Reti said didn’t fit with his Government’s “growth agenda”.
The three scrapped Māori-led projects aimed to study how rongoā Māori could be implemented in primary care; set up a Māori research platform in the Taranaki area; and lead the first study of the impacts of extractive sand mining through both a mātauranga Māori and western science lens.
The last one mentioned suggests different impacts would be identified – perhaps contradictory ones – by applying a matauranga Māori lens compared with what was mislabelled as a “western science” lens.
Richard Dawkins, Emeritus Professor of the Public Understanding of Science
at the University of Oxford, addressed that mislabelling in a letter to Dr Roger Ridley, at the Royal Society of New Zealand, after reading Jerry Coyne’s long, detailed and fair-minded critique of the contentious move to incorporate Māori “ways of knowing” into science curricula in New Zealand.
Dawkins rebuked the Royal Society for its “frankly appalling failure” to champion science.
Not “Western” science, not “European” science, not “White” science, not “Colonialist” science. Just science. Science is science is science, and it doesn’t matter who does it, or where, or what “tradition” they may have been brought up in. True science is evidence-based not tradition-based; it incorporates safeguards such as peer review, repeated experimental testing of hypotheses, double-blind trials, instruments to supplement and validate fallible senses etc.
The Newsroom article today proceeded to note that the three projects at the centre of its concerns had been funded by an offshoot of what was called Te Pūnaha Hihiko Vision Mātauranga Capability Fund.
The contracts, if they had been approved, were due to begin this month.
But instead of receiving the $31m in expected funding at the start of the month, the project leaders were told their applications would not be progressed, as their work didn’t align with the coalition Government’s vision for the science sector.
Political reporter Fox Meyer did recognise that a complex rearranging of Māori-led science research was part of the Government’s wider science reforms.
Earlier this year, the coalition announced its overhaul of the sector in the hope of research helping drive economic growth.
But his focus was on “Māori” science, knowledge, research – or whatever you might care to call it.
This year’s Budget merged the $5.9m Vision Mātauranga Capability Fund and the $4.5m He Aka Ka Toro Navigation Fund. The new funding stream was refocused on economic growth and renamed the He Ara Whakahihiko Capability Fund, bringing its budget up to $10.9m.
Further funding was drawn from the Strategic Science Investment fund, a platform that funds research into Antarctic science, infectious diseases, space engineering and data science, among other areas. The 2024-25 budget for this fund was $368m.
The new fund will direct $8.6m to its own Māori-led research projects, with $1.9m of the fund dedicated to health research and $400,000 to application and reporting support.
But let’s note that on 4 December, the then Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins, announced the Government “has updated the Marsden Fund to focus on core scientific research that helps lift our economic growth and contributes to science with a purpose”.
“The Government has been clear in its mandate to rebuild our economy. We are focused on a system that supports growth, and a science sector that drives high-tech, high-productivity, high-value businesses and jobs,” Ms Collins says
“I have updated the Marsden Fund Investment Plan and Terms of Reference to ensure that future funding is going to science that helps to meet this goal.”
The new Investment Plan was focused on supporting research that could be of economic, environmental or health benefit to New Zealand. The new Terms of Reference outline that approximately 50 per cent of funds will go towards supporting proposals with economic benefits to New Zealand.
A few weeks later the Government announced a raft of changes it is making to New Zealand’s science, innovation and technology system “to drive economic growth, set a clear direction and position New Zealand for a prosperous future”.
Among the changes, Callaghan Innovation was to be disestablished, with its most important functions transferred to other parts of the science, innovation and technology system.
Then came Budget 2025.
A total of $212 million was cut from the science sector in a Budget which reprioritised existing research funding towards commercially focused science and innovation for all research – not just the Māori sector.
Newsroom’s Fox Meyer was aware of what happened: he told The Detail that “the scale of the cuts is not great for the sector, but it’s also more about the lack of investment”.
He worries the fall-out will include a “brain drain” with our country’s brightest and best scientists and researchers opting to take up positions overseas.
“My connections in the science world – plenty of them – have moved.
“The chief science advisor for the Department of Conservation has moved to Australia … that’s an expert in a cutting-edge field that we have lost to a company in Australia.
“And it’s not the only example of this sort of thing. We invest so much in training up these scientists, and they are very skilled scientists, and then to not give them what they are asking for and what they need, I feel it falls short of our own investment.”
But guess what?
Fox at that time said that, in fairness, “it is not all doom and gloom”.
“So, the positives, there is a new funding pool for Māori-related science, that’s a good thing. There’s the sector-wide report that has come out, which has given us a good look at the sector. We know more now, that’s a good thing. And the chief science advisor has been appointed, and the panel around him has been appointed, that’s a good thing there.”
Science sector leaders had a raft of concerns, nevertheless.
Dr Troy Baisden, Co-President of the New Zealand Association of Scientists, noted that millions of dollars were being withdrawn from the contestable research funds like Marsden ($5.5m cut in 2026/27) and smaller cut from the Health Research Fund.
A cut of $24m would hit the longer term Strategic Science Investment Funding, although it was expected to rebuild its funding over time.
The Endeavour Fund had no cuts but won’t take proposals next year, and the two main funds for Universities, the Performance Based Research Fund and Centres of Research Excellence face another year with no inflation adjustments.
Important areas like GeoNet suffered a cut of about 13%, or $4m.
Dr Lucy Stewart, the other Co-President of the New Zealand Association of Scientists, said the Government had cut frontline research funding in order to pay for its back office science reforms.
Overall, science funding had dropped by approximately $45 million.
But she also said:
“I can however point to one small bright spot – the He Ara Whakahihiko Capability Fund, formerly the Vision Mātauranga Capability Fund, has received a small but meaningful funding boost, as have fellowships for early and mid career researchers. If only the same could be said for the rest of the science and research system.”
Why wasn’t she quoted in Newsroom’s article today?
Oh – and can we expect Māori researchers to take their grievances to the Waitangi Tribunal?
The Treaty of Waitangi is bound to have been breached somewhere.
Bob Edlin is a veteran journalist and editor for the Point of Order blog HERE. - where this article was sourced.
1 comment:
Yet more creative Maori nonsense, no possibility of anything useful coming from " investing " in this re-named matauranga "science ".
Who are the people who are allocating tax funds to this collection of meaningless pages of pseudo science?
Do they feel guilty, do they have a conscience ?
Slurp, slurp, at the trough.
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