Scientist Returns For “Friends, Fishing, Climate”

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29363, 16 November 1960, Page 19

Scientist Returns For “Friends, Fishing, Climate”

(From Our Own Reporter)

WELLINGTON, November 15. A prominent English-born agricultural scientist who left New Zealand two years ago, largely because of dissatisfaction with New Zealand university salaries, has come back to his old job. He is Professor T. W. Walker, who has sacrificed £3OO a year from his salary as professor of agriculture at King’s College, University of Durham, to resume his old job of professor of soil science at Canterbury Agricultural Collage. During his two-year absence, the college has been unable to fill the vacancy he left, and although there has been a substantial increase in university salaries in the meantime, he is still making a financial sacrifice to return to his adopted country.

In an interview today, Professor Walker gave as his reasons for returning to New Zealand—“friends, fishing and climate.” He also believes there is a greater challenge in soil problems in New Zealand. “Those are my main reasons,” he said. “Certainly they are not financial. The cost of living here seems to be as high, if not higher, than the cost of living in England. “Some people have told me I am a fool to come bock here, but I hope to stay and put roots down for good.” However, he does not see himself as a pioneer of a fresh migration of exiles to their homeland because of the rise in salaries in New Zealand. He thinks young New Zealand scientists will continue to go overseas until salaries are equated. While New Zealand was losing scientists to Britain and elsewhere, Britain was losing them, particularly physicists, to America.

British universities were trying to combat this drift by paying differentials to physicists and others, and, as in New Zealand, by appointing men to higher posts than they could otherwise obtain.

As soon as university salaries were raised in New Zealand, a similar increase was granted in British universities, he said. The average salary for a chair in a British university was a basic £2900, with an allowance of £5O for each child- In New Zealand the salary tor a chair is £2BOO. “I have four children and so I am coming back £3OO a year worse off,” he said. On top of this the British universities had the right to pay up to £3BOO for men they could not afford to lose. “Australia, as far as I can see, has seen the light,” said Professor Walker. "It is beginning to ,pa-y very favourable salaries. Perhaps they have a few members of Parliament with breadth of outlook. It has been suggested to me, and I’m inclined to agree, that we should pay a salary of between £3OOO and £4OOO a year to members of Parliament in New Zealand to attract some men with vision and breadth of outlook.” Professor Walker said England had become desperately overcrowded, although standards of living had been raised considerably in the last 10 years. It appeared to him that the working man in New Zealand was somewhat better off than his English counterpart, but professional and academic men were relatively worse off.