At the top of the menu is, of course, pushing through New Zealand’s largest science reset in more than three decades.

The broad plan is to meld our seven Crown Research Institutes (CRIs) – Niwa, GNS Science, ESR, Scion, Plant and Food Research, AgResearch and Manaaki Whenua-Landcare Research – into three new entities.

A fourth “Public Research Organisation” – or PROs as they’re already called in short-hand – will focus on advanced tech like AI and synthetic biology, while Callaghan Innovation is dismantled and shut down.

There’s little time for Reti to add flesh to the framework left to him by predecessor Judith Collins – legislation needed to set up the new hubs is due within months – which means some big decisions have to be made now.

What will the PROs look like and how will they function?

How will the key remnants of Callaghan – many staff are already being made redundant with few places to go – be absorbed elsewhere in the system?

Asked if he’d go about the role differently to Collins – who drew the academic community’s ire for cost-cutting calls and leaving the science sector in limbo for the better part of a year over the reset plans – Reti said his “direction of travel” would be the same.

That was an overall focus on economic growth. So which areas did he view as having the greatest potential?

He singles out three: space, name-checking RocketLab’s Sir Peter Beck; energy, pointing to GNS Science’s work to find new geothermal sources deep underground; and medical technology.

“It’s not just my health bias; I think we are strong in the med tech environment.”

‘Grinding in reverse’

If Reti’s former domain of health is in obvious crisis – a chaotic and understaffed kitchen trying to serve an over-booked restaurant, perhaps – the portfolio he inherits isn’t a picture of stability either.

Even before the ground-shifting impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s been haemorrhaging talent under seemingly endless restructuring in university departments and public research bodies.

This month, the Save Science Coalition calculated that the number of recent job losses in the system – some vanishing from areas no less important than monitoring our natural hazards – had lurched toward 600.

The job losses weren’t likely to stop soon, it warned, with hundreds more roles potentially up for the axe in the coming revamp.

There’s not yet any indication the makeover will come with new funding; the former Government’s ripped-up reform plans at least came alongside a $450m boost for science infrastructure in Wellington, which was also quickly cancelled post-election.

Former National Science Minister Steven Joyce summed the latest moves up as a “reorganisation of the deck chairs” – while Motu’s Dr Kyle Higham likened them to “trying to make more lemonade by squeezing used lemons slightly harder, rather than investing in more lemon”.

That’s not a new problem: GDP invested in the science sector over the past two decades has budged little and New Zealand’s roughly 1.5% spend now trails that of other comparable economies.

New Zealand Association of Scientist co-president Professor Troy Baisden similarly struggles to understand how the Government can pursue a growth agenda without fronting up funding.

“Essentially what we’ve got is the Prime Minister claiming they’re putting growth into high gear, but what’s actually happening in the R and D system is we’re grinding in reverse,” he said.

“We barely have enough people functioning in the system to do the complex stuff that would really lift a future economy.”

Reti acknowledges those concerns that we’re losing scientific expertise at a time his Government talks of wanting to get more out of the system.

He says that part of the argument for rethinking the CRIs was to remove duplication and under-utilisation while making “cost-effective use” of the $1.2b of public research dollars invested in the system each year.

“Secondly, we need to look at, be encouraged by, and do more of those areas in New Zealand where we are cutting edge … where we may want to attract and are already attracting overseas interest.”

He offers some more examples to help his point: OpenStar Technologies, which is trying to crack nuclear fusion from Wellington, and Victoria University’s Robinson Research Institute, which continues to break ground in the field of superconductivity.

“There are some areas … and we need to have more of them to hold and bring in new talent.”

Reti also brings up the Government’s widely welcomed moves to change intellectual property rules that will enable researchers to reap financial rewards for commercialised work.

“So I take the point, we need to make every endeavour we can to retain our brightest and our best, and I certainly get that, and through the portfolio, we’ll be looking to do that.”

On gene tech and unis

He faces plenty of other pressing questions from the sector.

One particularly urgent one is what will fill the hole left by December’s controversial announcement that Marsden Fund grants for humanities and social sciences research would effectively end.

Reti says money will still be available through sources like Tertiary Education Commission’s Performance-Based Research Fund, Centres of Research Excellence and course subsidies.

The shock decision led to criticism that the economy-focused coalition Government simply didn’t value those important academic fields. Did Reti?

He retorts: “Do you think I come out of social science and humanities? Do you think health might be that, my whole career?

“I see their importance when I speak with universities, and we talk about how we lift university rankings, and a number of them say, well, our ranking position is supported by the social sciences and humanities contributions. So yes, I do see them as important.”

Critics have also questioned the Government’s appetite for receiving scientific advice, having left the influential role of Prime Minister’s chief science adviser unfilled since Professor Dame Juliet Gerrard’s departure last July.

The reforms will set up a science advisory council for Christopher Luxon, but whether the chief science adviser’s office is revived is another question.

“We’re having those discussions now, I haven’t reached a conclusion, but we will do shortly.”

Elsewhere, Reti inherits the enormously complex task of shepherding through the Government’s Gene Technology Bill, currently before Parliament’s health select committee.

Some aspects of the legislation – such as modernising rules for medical research in areas like Car-T cell therapy – appear more straightforward than others: namely potential risks and implications for the environment.

“It’s that part that’s tricky,” Reti says.

“Always has been, always will be, and it needs a great deal of thought.”

There are plenty of viewpoints that need to be considered, from Māori to potentially affected commercial groups, as Parliament’s environment commissioner Simon Upton pointed out in his own broadly supportive submission.

The organic sector has unsurprisingly come out fiercely against the bill, arguing, among other things that it would threaten export potential and make GMO-free certification “impossible”.

“I do understand those concerns but we would look to other countries that have more updated gene technology legislation,” Reti said, naming the United States as one such country.

“So I’m encouraged by that, but I’m certainly willing to hear, and pivot, and position around the concerns of the local industry so that we can deliver this bill.”

Then there’s the question of where the coming shake-up of the university sector, which he’ll also be overseeing, will fit into the science reset.

There are already worries that more tertiary course cuts are on the cards, with unconfirmed indications that a 4% “lifeline” funding boost for universities won’t be renewed.

Reti says he’s awaiting further reports from two advisory panels – both chaired by former chief scientist Professor Sir Peter Gluckman – that will ultimately help firm up changes in the university and science domains.

He thinks it positive he gets to sit across both.

“That the Prime Minister has given me universities and science, innovation and technology, to have the levers for those two is very encouraging,” he said.

“It’s an exciting Venn diagram to bring together.”

Jamie Morton is a specialist in science and environmental reporting. He joined the Herald in 2011 and writes about everything from conservation and climate change to natural hazards and new technology.

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