BUDGET 2025: Budget reprioritises existing research funding towards commercially-focused science and innovation

Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga Pou Matarua, Tahu Kukutai, Melinda Webber & Linda Waimarie Nikora, comment:

“For the science system, Budget 2025 is both uninspiring and unsurprising.

“The overall delegation for Science, Innovation and Technology is $1.17B which is about $45M less than the last budget. Aotearoa has long languished in the bottom half of the OECD for spending on SIT as a share of GDP. Politicians and their advisors talk the big game of wanting to be more like Denmark, Finland and Singapore. But by the OECD’s own metrics, we’re more like Turkey and Greece. Maybe we’ll end up neighbours with Lithuania. Time will tell.

“The budget is largely a shuffling of the deckchairs, with no new investment in the major funds, and some taking from Peter to give to Paul.

“Most of the spending is from ‘reprioritisation’ to enable the SIT reforms. The Health Research Council and Catalyst Fund are down $29M while the Endeavour Fund, Strategic Investment Fund and Marsden Fund are stagnant. The cut to the HRC budget is a red flag, given the ill-considered defunding of the social sciences and humanities last year, and last week’s decision to pause a contestable Endeavour round in 2026. We’ve already seen the fallout of defunding across our network, with Māori researchers disproportionately impacted. Cuts in HRC funding will likely compound that. We will be closely watching for signals of a narrowing of scope to ‘deprioritise’ Māori health and public health research in the coming year.

“In terms of dedicated Māori SIT funding, the crumb gets some upsizing, with He Ara Whakahihiko Capability Fund increased from $5.98M to $10.98M. That’s a relatively big boost but from a very low investment base. In short, the crumb remains a crumb.

“Not so for gaming development firms who enjoy a third year of rebates ($44M) – two of them under the SIT appropriation – for eligible expenses which includes marketing and consumer research. That of course pales by comparison with the whopper $577M increase to the international screen production rebate (in the Economic Growth appropriation) which will take the government’s investment in the film industry to $1.09B over the next four years.

“The SIT budget is a world away from the recommendations made in the 2021 Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga report ‘Te Pūtahitanga: A Tiriti-led science-policy approach for Aotearoa New Zealand’. That report laid out an ambitious te ao Māori agenda for SIT reform, including the establishment of a mātauranga Māori entity, stronger monitoring of Māori SIT investment , and a more devolved approach to SIT to empower and support community-led priorities and solutions. It’s a vision to which we remain firmly committed.”

Conflict of interest statement: Tahu Kukutai was the lead author on Te Pūtahitanga.

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