‘Science tsar’ leads once-in-a-generation review of NZ science and universities
Sir Peter Gluckman: “It’s a big burden, but it’s one that is so important for New Zealand.” Photo / Elise Manahan
It’s midday in Christchurch and Aotearoa’s science éminence grise, Sir Peter Gluckman, is well into pressing business. Only days before, he had returned from Rwanda and a meeting of the International Science Council, of which he is president. Now, Gluckman has caught an early flight from Auckland to Christchurch for meetings for another of the hats he wears: chairing the government’s Science System Advisory Group and its University Advisory Group.
A half-finished Americano coffee sits in front of him on the table at the airport-adjacent Commodore Hotel and he’s tapping away on his tablet, making notes before he takes another flight mid-afternoon, en route to Wellington for more business of science and education.
If this was the US, Gluckman would be called the nation’s “science tsar”. From 2009-18, he was our inaugural chief science adviser to the prime minister, serving John Key, Bill English and Jacinda Ardern and receiving the nation’s highest honour, membership of the Order of New Zealand, midway.
For the past four years, he has been director of the University of Auckland’s Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures, an apt career bookend to his initial work as a paediatrician.
Now, at 75, he has picked up arguably his biggest role yet. The coalition government has handed him what seems a colossal job, chairing both the science and universities advisory groups.
With the ashes of Labour’s Te Ara Paerangi – Future Pathways science reforms still smouldering before him, Gluckman will lead teams trying to chart a vigorous way forward for Kiwi science and the tertiary sector during the next few decades.
Why him? “You’d have to ask the two ministers, or cabinet, why they chose me,” he says. “I suspect I’m seen to be a senior person who’s worked on all sides of the equation. I hope I’m reasonably trusted. I think I’m quite good at separating the wheat from the chaff and not getting caught up in the weeds, but actually, with the panel, asking the real questions.
“Reviews are not there to solve all the practical details. They’re there to kick the tyres and ask the real questions: What’s the system for? What do you want from it? What shape should it look like? What are the issues within it? How do we fix them? And then, if the government accepts our review, it’s for the [relevant] ministry to work out how to operationalise it.
“I’m not sure who else could have done it if you’re going to do it as one review. And I don’t mean that egotistically, but you have to have a person who had a deep understanding of both systems, of research, innovation and higher education.
“My wife didn’t want me to do it. It’s a big burden, but it’s one that is so important for New Zealand.”