canberra

Research gained a small increase in the budget of the New Zealand government, delivered last week. But the increase received a mixed reception, and New Zealand science seems to be following other downward trends evident in the Australian budget revealed two days earlier (see Nature 393, 101; 1998).

Maurice Williamson, New Zealand's minister for research, science and technology, announced that NZ$10 million (US$5.34 million) more would be allocated to research in all portfolios, bringing the ‘science envelope’ to a total of NZ$600 million, and representing an increase roughly in line with expected inflation.

Of this extra money, the Public Good Science Fund (PGSF), administered by the Foundation for Research Science and Technology, will receive another NZ$9 million, bringing its funding to NZ$317.3 million for 1998-99. The remaining NZ$1 million is directed to “non-specific output funding” for nine government-owned Crown Research Institutes.

Science leaders have praised Williamson for holding the line against reported cabinet opposition and keeping spending on research constant in real terms. Yet there is a marked shortfall from the extra NZ$25 million that Williamson had earlier stated was needed to keep up with the growth in gross domestic product (GDP) (see Nature 391, 426; 1998).

In a statement, Williamson claimed that the increase in dollars is “a continuation of the government's commitment to increase public investment to 0.8 per cent of GDP by 2010”. But observers predict that the national expenditure on research and development relative to GDP will slip below the last stated New Zealand figure of 0.52 for 1995-96.

The PGSF is the principal source of competitive funding for Crown Research Institutes, as well as for projects by researchers in the country's seven universities. An extra NZ$7.7 million is being directed by Williamson to 17 areas of the fund in proportions largely unchanged from the past two years.

The 18th area, the Health Research Council, will receive an extra NZ$1.5 million, taking its total to NZ$33.2 million. But this research council has also been moved from marginal to full-cost funding of research grants within three years, and the result is likely to be a fall in the size of grants.

The Marsden Fund for competitive grants in basic research, run by the Royal Society of New Zealand, will remain at last year's level of NZ$22 million, and the government has dropped its own target of increasing the fund to 10 per cent of the PGSF. The president of the academy, George Petersen, speaking in a personal capacity, “particularly regrets” this decision.

Although acknowledging fiscal restraints, he says it “will require massive increases to bring spending on basic research back on track. The budget sends very poor signals to the scientific community and the government is clearly putting other priorities ahead of science.”

Before the publication of a government white paper detailing decisions on a review of higher education (see Nature 392, 320; 1998), the education minister, Wyatt Creech, announced a massive change in the university funding system to a new taxpayer-funded ‘Universal Tertiary Tuition Allowance’. While vice-chancellors welcome the change, staff and students are violently opposing universities being driven by students' choices through portable, personal ‘vouchers’.