Cuts to the Marsden Fund short-sighted
The government has sent a very clear signal that it doesn’t value fundamental research in fields such as law, history, health psychology, education, public health and nursing.
These are just some of the fields that no longer have access to the Marsden Fund, New Zealand’s only significant funding source for investigator-led, fundamental research. The suggestion that research in the humanities and social science fields doesn’t benefit "economic growth" is short-sighted, ill-advised and downright dull.
Furthermore, it devalues the contribution of our outstanding humanities and social science scholars who are addressing some of the major issues of our time, such as climate change, poverty, and mental health.
The government has moved without, it seems, understanding that the physical and social sciences interact in important ways. For example, you can develop the best vaccine in the world, but if you don’t understand the historical, social and cultural barriers preventing people vaccinating, you are in trouble. And if you would really like to be economically focused, then replace "vaccine" and "vaccinating" in the previous sentence with "product" and "buying it".
Marsden funded research, encourages this kind of interaction, but it does much more than that. Research in the social sciences and humanities helps us to understand ourselves and our place in society, and the world. What could be more important in producing a mature and confident nation?
Finally, let’s not forget that Marsden funding is an important incubator of our young talent, as a high proportion of grant funds go to supporting early career researchers. Irrespective of discipline, these individuals develop new skills in areas such as data analysis, communication and critical thinking, that will often lead to careers outside the research sector, and thus broadly support knowledge growth and evidence-based decision making in Aotearoa.
The Marsden Fund is an investment in our future, and it has always been focused on outcomes that provide benefit to New Zealand. In fact, it’s a key part of the fund’s terms of reference.
It is, therefore, a great pity that this government has decided to interpret "benefit" in such narrow terms.
[David Bilkey is a professor at the University of Otago and was chairman of the Marsden Fund Council from 2018-2022. His letter is written in a personal capacity. — Editor.]
Objective first
At present there is much discussion about capital gains tax, wealth tax etc. Those are possible tools but there is no objective as to what they might be used to achieve.
In my opinion the objective should be to generate a substantial increase in the government’s tax take to allow reinstatement of chronically underfunded programmes that are, rightly, government responsibilities.
For example, it is well documented that we are chronically short of nurses, and approximately half of new graduates cannot get jobs. There are many more examples of government underfunding in health and other programmes.
Hence the objective of tax reform should be a substantial increase in government income; then we can debate about the tools to achieve it.
Keep calm, carry on
How I enjoyed and appreciated reading Civis’ on 16.11.24. As a surviving member of the silent generation the thoughts expressed there rang true.
In spite of the described hardships people carried on, determined and resolute. No options. Thank you for the recognition.
Getting the retail message right at Christmas
I am the owner of a small business. Finally the dark days of winter have been replaced with blue skies and hopefully the sound of Christmas shoppers.
However, the message from a large courier company "shop from home this Christmas" doesn’t do much to brighten the spirits of those small business owners who don’t have an on-line presence.
The message should be "support a local business this Christmas because the next time you walk past the business it may be empty. It will be off-line."
Complementary beliefs
Aulis Alen (Letters ODT 27.11.24) suggests that science cancels out spiritual belief : in fact, they complement each other.
The Bible states that God created the universe. There is no reason to suggest He could not have done so eight billion years ago. Then the Bible states that the earth was without form "and darkness was upon the face of the deep".
The phrase "the deep" is from a Hebrew word that suggests the original state of the earth was as shapeless as liquid water. Take Saturn. It’s made up of hydrogen, helium, water and other gases. That, to me, sounds similar.
Aulis Alen argues the Earth was probably molten rock and toxic fumes that took millions of years to cool down. This is a quite reasonable explanation of the Bible’s description of our planet at its creation. The Bible does not say Earth was created in 24 modern hours and was immediately a paradise for humans. Science and the Bible are telling the same story, and maybe one day their parallel paths will merge.
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