Callaghan failure

The Post reports:

Nearly a third of the Callaghan Innovation’s $149 million Covid-era research and development loan book is in arrears, including $21.5m linked to 63 failed or insolvent businesses, as the agency enters its final months before disestablishment.

Callaghan Innovation – a government entity set up to make businesses around the country more innovative and provide grants – is now being disestablished as part of wider science system reforms.

Pretty clear why it is being disestablished. A third of the loan book in areas would cause any other lender to go bankrupt. The Government is not good at this stuff, and should leave it alone.

Labour’s science, technology, and innovation spokesperson, Reuben Davidson, said these were emergency research and development loans during Covid, which “helped companies keep their researchers employed and their programmes running when private funding dried up”.

Labour should be apologising, not defending the indefensible.

Save Science Coalition spokesperson Ben Wylie-van Eerd, also a candidate for The Opportunity Party, was made redundant from Callaghan Innovation as part of the Government’s science reforms.

He said there was a “broad acknowledgement” within the science system that Callaghan’s model hadn’t been as successful as hoped.

But he said having just a third of the short-term research and development loanbook in arrears “honestly sounds more positive than I was expecting”.

“If an angel investor had only a third of their companies that they invested in fail, they’d be jumping for joy.”

Really? Well I invested in a venture capital fund (Punakaiki) in 2013 and it has not had a third of companies it invested in failing.