New Zealand’s biggest public science shake-up in decades puts commercial gains first

Saturday, 16 August 2025

The Government’s radical reform of New Zealand’s public science sector is not just a policy overhaul - it’s a massive organisational upheaval affecting thousands of scientists, regional research centres, and the future of public-good science.

Seven Crown Research Institutes (CRIs) were merged into three new entities on July 1, just months after the changes - the biggest for the public science sector in 33 years - were announced.

The largest, the Bioeconomy Science Institute (BSI), based at Lincoln, combined four primary industry CRIs: AgResearch, Landcare Research, Plant & Food Research and Scion. It has research responsibilities to the native estate and the pests that trouble them, transition chief executive office Mark Piper said.

Meanwhile, GNS Science and Niwa have merged to become Earth Sciences NZ, while also swallowing MetService. ESR remains standalone but gets a new name, the Institute for Public Health and Forensic Science. A new Institute for Advanced Technology is also being created.

Calls for CRI reform have been heard for years. The most recent was a scathing 64-page study led by Sir Peter Gluckman that called for radical change across the whole NZ science sector, including universities.

There is also a new Prime Minister’s Science Innovation and Technology Advisory Council with a mandate to provide advice on the “long-term direction and high-level priorities” for Government-funded science, along with areas that could be “deprioritised”.

The reforms will make public science “aggressively commercial”, said Lucy Stewart co-president of the NZ Association of Scientists, which advocates for researchers.

The association agrees the CRIs needed reform, but public-good and blue-sky research are still needed and will not necessarily make money.

Public-good research includes identifying and fighting pest species like brown marmorated stink bugs, which could decimate New Zealand’s fruit and vegetable industries if the insects ever established here.

Piper denies BSI would stop that kind of research. “Insects and disease are … absolutely front of mind,” he said. “You wouldn't want to downgrade any of that.”

The Government ”recognises the benefit“ of public-good science, said Judith Collins, the minister of science, innovation and technology when the reforms were announced in January. She has since been replaced by Shane Reti.

Piper was chief executive at Plant & Food from 2023-25 and said there were “bits missing” in previous Government directions to the CRIs. He applauded the “real clarity on government priorities” coming out of Wellington now.

BSI needs “big targets” set by Government, so it can set fat targets for itself, he said.

A problem is that no new money is coming in. “The Government has been pretty clear on that,” Piper said.

BSI’s budget has not been cut, but revenue worth “tens of millions” has fallen out of BSI’s revenue as Government departments - significant customers - cut their spending.

Stewart wondered if budget cuts would come next year.

Piper has an answer for that. “I really have a strong view that … prioritisation matters,” he said.

Bad ideas are easy to dismiss. “But actually, we have to say no to some good ideas because we need to focus on the most impactful ones,” he said.

He also promised “take some risk” on things that the Government and industry were not asking for yet.

For the time being, little has changed at BSI’s Lincoln headquarters - actually AgResearch’s award-winning new Tuhiraki building.

Existing management and staff remain in place and the four CRIs are now called “units” of BSI.

A board has been appointed, Piper appointed as the transitional chief executive, and a modest website published.

Piper spent 30 years at Fonterra, including years at the co-op’s Chicago office and culminating as president of Fonterra (USA) Inc. He later led its global R&D office.

He will continue living in Palmerston North. “It's a great place to raise a family and I've got a lot of children.” (Piper and his wife have six).

BSI will be decentralised: “My intention is that we've got leadership spread across the country”. The large, established research centres will remain open and he sees value in keeping smaller regional offices and labs in place because they are close to industry and in the appropriate growing climates, which matters.

Meanwhile, the business of merging has just started. The four units use different software for payroll, finance, human resources, project management and the like.

BSI needs one of each and they are expensive and how that will shake out is not known.

There are about 2000 people, including more than 1500 scientists and researchers. Are jobs at risk?

“We don’t have a … target that we’re trying to hit,” Piper said. “We just have a plan to sort of go, what’s the best we need?”

Reuben Davidson, the Labour Party spokesperson on science, would not commit to undoing the changes, but did not hold back on criticising them.

The focus was on “getting it done, rather than getting it right”, the first-term MP for Christchurch East said. That does not always lead to good science.

The Government is only interested in productivity gains and economic growth, he said, but good science does not work like that.