Research Spending Attacked

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31383, 31 May 1967, Page 1

Research Spending Attacked

Press Association) WELLINGTON, May 30. The National Research Advisory Council took the Government to task today for failing to implement the £160,000 research programme it advocated last year and expressed its concern that the Government had failed to maintain the recommended long-term expansion of research expenditure.

“The council is, of course, aware of the economic conditions facing the country and realises that Government expenditure must be trimmed wherever possible and reasonable,” it said in its annual report tabled in Parliament today.

Economic cut-backs affected two matters in which the council was vitally concerned:—

Research.—To be effective, this must be a continuous operation requiring longterm recruitment planning and provision of facilities. New Zealand was short of first-class scientists in various fields of research pertinent to the economy and stop-go research policies would neither recruit new, nor retain existing workers of first-class calibre. Expenditure.—The country spent only a very small fraction of its income on research and this fraction had always been too low. Research expenditure was one of the expenditures, that, in the short term, it always' seems painless to restrict In the long term this could only be a step in the wrong direction.

The council said it was seriously concerned that the Government had failed to maintain the recommended long-term expansion of research expenditure—amounting to approximately £439,000 a year—that it approved in principle. It recommended in its annual report last year the following additional expenditure—£26,ooo on building research, £25,000 on the manufacturing industry; £lO,OOO on the transport industry; £13,000 on oceanography, limnology and fisheries research; £16,000 on solid earth sciences; £50,000 on nuclear science, and £20,000 on scientific services for Government departments and agencies—a total of £160,000. “The Government has deferred a decision on these recommendations,” said the council’s report. But it said that the expansion of research expenditure recommended by the council r-

in its 1965 and last year's annual reports and not implemented by the Government in the current year amounted to only three ten-thousandths of the gross national product for 1966-67. “The council most strongly recommends that the Government return to its support of the policy set out in the council’s first annual report—namely a steady and deliberate growth in research effort with highest growth rates concentrated in those areas of research likely to prove most beneficial to the country’s economy,” said the report. “Scientific research may be regarded as a long-term investment,” it said. "The amount of monetary risk is small and the possible returns could be dramatic. “To invest more in scientific research at this moment would be a positive contribution towards solving the country’s problems,” said the report.