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PM John Key -
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The government is looking at a big revamp of the science sector next year, says Prime Minister John Key.
He told farmers at the Federated Farmers national council meeting in Wellington on Wednesday that research and development was a key issue for growing the economy.
New Zealand was spending only 0.5% of GDP on research at a government level, compared with a 0.8% average across the OECD.
It was also a fraction of the 3.5% the Japanese spent and needed to be raised if New Zealand were to earn more from the produce which it exports, he said.
Key also told the farmers they should worry less about the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), because it would cost the average farmer only about $3,000 a year, a tenth of what Labour had proposed.
"You should be much more relaxed about this," he said.
New Zealand's water was a competitive advantage, and building more dams was important for economic growth, he said.
The nation had spent 20 years contemplating its navel on water retention, and it was time to get on with the necessary work.
Federated Farmers president Don Nicolson told farmers no other country was as obsessed with emissions trading, and the government was "desperately grasping" for solutions.
He was tired of farmers being blamed for generating half of the nation's greenhouse gasses.
The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Jan Wright was "crushingly wrong" to say the taxpayers would be subsidising farmers, he said.
"Who, exactly, is subsidising whom?"
Farmers, manufacturers and tourism operators earned the cash that paid for teachers, doctors and other services.
Nicolson said "sandal-wearing, lentil-eating" hippies looked down on farmers as despised capitalists, but waxed lyrical about how great carbon trading was.
