Luxon & Co's quarterly plan

Is it just a PR exercise?

On Tuesday morning, prime minister Luxon released a 36-point action plan for the coming quarter. This resembles and builds on the 49-point first-100-days plan, and it shows us Luxon’s managerial style. But is it anything more than a PR exercise?

If viewed as PR, it seems to have worked: the prime minister was talking about it on Radio NZ’s Morning Report and on Newstalk ZB with Mike Hosking. And it allows anyone to see the government’s current priorities and goals.

The list sends a message to public servants – whose job is to implement the policies of the government-of-the-day. Talking with Hosking, the PM mentioned the problem of ministers being “captured” by public servants, some of whom may disagree with, or not want to be bothered with, some new policies. Quarterly lists of actions could cut through bureaucratic stonewalling, especially given that election results do reveal Wellington’s leftist tendency.

What, then, about the substance? Many of the items on the list were going to happen anyway (such as deliver a budget) or were already obvious (such as legislation for the FamilyBoost childcare tax credit). Now, there’s nothing wrong with predictability, and it’s only a quarterly “to do” list, maintaining the government’s momentum.

A few items caught my eye: “Set targets for improving public service outcomes” and in particular, issue a policy statement “setting the government’s priorities for the health system for the next three years”. This adds to the five big health targets already published under their 100-day plan.

While this government wants to “increase investment in renewable electricity generation”, the Green Party was on point to criticise them for planning “to keep agriculture out of the ETS [Emissions Trading Scheme]”, to take steps towards “the removal of the ban on offshore oil and gas exploration” and to investigate “reopening the Marsden Point Oil Refinery”.

In tertiary education, the government will “consult on a proposed replacement model” for the mega-polytech Te Pūkenga that’s now being deconstructed.

Further thoughts about the higher education and science sectors were revealed by the Minister for Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins in an interview with Kathryn Ryan last week. Collins said the main objectives here were to boost the economy and to get better social and environmental outcomes from new science. She said there needs to be more involvement from the private sector and better commercialisation of new intellectual property. She rightly pointed out that science funding is institutionally fragmented and overly competitive. Scientists are spending too much time applying for funding, often from more than one source at a time. Added to that, some institutions are downsizing, and hence losing talent in science and engineering.

Getting research funding is a complex exercise in form-filling, demanding that the applicant second-guess what gatekeepers might be thinking, forcing them to read between the lines of the published criteria. You can check out the Marsden Fund and the Health Research Council for yourself. If you can find a way to fit their priorities and requirements, including passing research ethics committees, thinking about the relevance to mātauranga Māori, and promising that your research will “deliver” or have “impact” (mainly meaning publication in international peer-reviewed journals), then you’re on the way. But there are many hoops to jump through, forms to fill, and so on, making financial approval a bureaucratic “permission to think”. If you still have any spirit of enterprise and innovation left by the time you get your funding – if you’re that lucky – then you deserve a medal already. Our best scientists get very skilled at this, however, because they have to.

Partly due to funding and career pressures on scientists, there’s been a worldwide rise in scientific and academic fraud.

There’s a strong case for giving scientists greater certainty of funding so they can get on with their jobs with integrity, while preserving accountability. It’s sadly predictable, however, that the next round of reform won’t be backed by much new money, and the humanities will be further starved in order to feed the science labs.

Getting back to the 36 points: the Luxon government will presumably continue to issue quarterly to-do lists – with items which they know in advance can be ticked off over the subsequent three months. This has the advantage of clarity, but it’s self-fulfilling: they can set their own goals, mark their own homework, and then boast about having “delivered”. That’s much easier than the mazes that scientists navigate when applying for funding.