Article claim ‘unbalanced’

Press, 3 August 1985, Page 8

Article claim ‘unbalanced’

Wellington reporter A change in D.S.I.R. finance to require an additional 2 per cent total funding from contract work did not constitute a Government “bludgeon” as had been claimed in "Nature” magazine, said the Minister of Science, Mr Tizard. He was commenting on a series of articles in the magazine which criticised science and technological developments in New Zealand.

Mr Tizard said the journalist concerned had based his claims on a fleeting vist to New Zealand and had not sought information to balance the claims he had made. He had made a brief visit in June, and from that had written on a range of

scientific and education topics. The basis for the writer’s assertion, that the Government was going ahead with a “user pays” philosophy in science and technology, ought to be assessed against the formula that the 1985 Budget had proposed for the proportion of D.S.I.R. work that the user paid for, an increase from 11 to 13 per cent of the D.S.I.R. total effort.

If this were the “bludgeon under which scientists were reeling” the English language seemed to be strangely misused, Mr Tizard said.

The Opposition spokesman on science, Mr Simon Upton (Raglan), asked what percentage of D.S.I.R. expenditure was expected to

be funded by charging for services, both now and in the future.

He was utterly opposed to any rundown in New Zealand’s capacity for basic research, whose benefits could not be calculated in advance and whose advantages might lie 10 years into the future. The Government must not be allowed to cut basic research. Mr Tizard said the title of the D.S.I.R. — Department of Scientific and Industrial Research — indicated its purpose. It did engage in some long-term research but its priority was to develop science and industry in tandem.

A move from 11 per cent to 13 per cent of its work in contracting projects to be paid for by the user was

surely in keeping with the department’s declared objectives, he said.