Bob Edlin: The future of Matauranga Māori funding is under review....

The future of Matauranga Māori funding is under review – but meanwhile MBIE has named 2025 beneficiaries

We reported earlier this month that the Science System Advisory Group was calling for submissions on the role of matauranga Māori in government research policy.

The group, led by Sir Peter Gluckman, is seeking public opinions on several issues, including how research involving the study of or the application of mātauranga Māori should be managed and funded.

Point of Order: Jerry Coyne applauds the pushback by academics against the rollout of Govt’s schooling plan to control what we think

Jerry A. Coyne, Emeritus Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, this week published an article headed Proposed New Zealand school curriculum and some strong pushback from four academics.

Not for the first time, he has commented on the reform of New Zealand’s curriculum for secondary schools.

Right now – he points out – the New Zealand Government’s Ministry of Education has begun rolling out “proposals,” documents that outline the curriculum area by area.

The Ministry is soliciting comments from the public on these areas, with the intention of implementing a final curriculum by 2026.

Point of Order: How the Treaty of Waitangi is determining the direction in which state-funded science will be taken (or dragged back?)

We have come – or gone – a long way, in the past two decades. In which direction is open to discussion.

Writing for The Independent Business Weekly on 22 January 2003, I noted how a localised Māori belief in a taniwha had obliged Transit New Zealand to stop work on a stretch of new expressway near Meremere for several weeks.

The Environmental Risk Management Authority was consulting people about ways to incorporate Māori spiritual values in a revised policy. The authority (according to newspaper reports at the time) might regard Māori spiritual concerns as sufficient reason for rejecting research applications for genetic research approvals, even if there was no physical biological risk.