Science Media Centre

The Science Media Centre put questions on key science-related issues to the political parties ahead of the General Election scheduled to be held on November 26.  Please click on the links below to find the answers from responding political parties (or download as a PDF): Science priorities  |  Crown Research Institutes  |  Science and education  [...]

In the lead up to the election, the Dominion Post has quizzed National and Labour on what the key issues are in the agricultural sector. Excerpts (read in full here): Big issues loom over agriculture With Parliament rising on Thursday, and campaigning for Election 2011 getting under way in earnest, the parties were asked to [...]

An opinion piece by Rod Oram of the Sunday Star Times on New Zealand’s tenuous credibility regarding climate change, and the issue having become ‘the litmus test of National’s political skills’. An excerpt: (read in full here) “This is the final showdown between the enlightened forces for positive change and the dark forces of climate [...]

We’re all familiar with how those political maps ended up looking after election night both here and in the US. The US once again had a swathe of red through its middle as the Democrats cleaned up on the coasts and in the north-east. The map of New Zealand was a sea of blue – [...]

The best science opinion piece published in New Zealand this week has to be the letter to the editor in the Dominion Post (November 11) written by past Rutherford Medal winner and distinguished scientist Jeff Tallon. As Barack Obama is showing with his pragmatic approach to appointing science and technology csars to his administration, National [...]

As Science (subscription required) reported last week, the US Government’s US$700 billion bail-out of the financial sector included a bundle of provisions designed to get the legislation over the line, including an extension of the US research and development tax credit system. There’s been much discussion lately about New Zealand’s 15 per cent R&D tax [...]

1. Education: New Zealand is struggling to produce enough science and technology graduates to meet the demanded for a skilled workforce. What will you do to improve the attractiveness of science and technology among young students in the education sector? National was disappointed to see the results of the latest NEMP survey on science in [...]

The Science Media Centre asked the leaders of the two largest political parties to state their positions on the big science and technology-related issues facing the country. The answers to these questions are published below with the aim of increasing public awareness of the major party leaders’ views on science and technology. For Labour’s answers [...]

As the election nears and National’s $1.5 billion broadband plan is touted by John Key as the best enabler of the digital economy in New Zealand, the Government has unveiled its revised digital strategy for the country out to 2015. In this podcast of this morning’s Beehive press conference, Cunliffe explains why he thinks Labour’s [...]