Its great to see the government reaching out to the country to
get feedback on what the big challenges facing NZ are, and the
role that science can play in helping solve these. However, I’m
dissatisfied with the possible challenges that they have put up
on the website for two reasons. Firstly, many of these seem to
be some of the Transformational Research, Science & Technology
topics identified by MoRST (one of the grandparents of the
Science & Innovation group in MBIE) several years ago. Nothing
wrong with that, it was good work. But not a lot of additional
thinking about these seems to have gone on since then.  The more
unsatisfactory aspect is that these potential challenges cover
much of what is already funded under existing schemes – more of
the same rather than something novel. Yes, they are examples
only, and the Cabinet Paper does refer to the use of “straw men”
in the public consultation. But I’d expect more effort to help
the public consider what a good science challenge is or what
some important sp