sydney

With a general election looming, New Zealand's minority National Party government has increased science and technology spending by NZ$14.8 million to NZ$426.2 million (US$226 million) in its budget for 1999-2000, keeping funding slightly ahead of inflation.

But this increase will make no impact on NZ's ranking near the bottom of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's league tables. A target set in 1996 for the research and development budget to grow annually, from 0.53 to 0.8 per cent of gross domestic product by 2010, appears to have been shelved.

A New Economy Research Fund, worth NZ$5.6 million, has been introduced to help generate new technologies, and some grant schemes have received small increases. But the university sector is upset that there was no restoration of a cut of NZ$95 million made during last year's economic crisis.

Graeme Fogelberg, chair of the NZ Vice-Chancellors' Committee, said the cuts would: “rip the heart out of postgraduate education to fund undergraduate courses and a ‘contestable research’ fund,” worth NZ$20 million next year.

The budget was preceded by an announcement of the cabinet's blueprint for research and development. These funding guidelines are based on 14 ‘target outcomes’ developed as part of the Ministry for Research, Science and Technology's controversial Foresight project (see Nature 398, 450;1999).

George Petersen, president of the Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand, is relieved that the importance of basic research is specifically mentioned in the outcomes. But he is disappointed in the lack of answers to pressing questions about funding levels and distribution.

A move to run all government-funded research using the Foresight model is said to have been shunned during budget planning by other ministries.