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Speaker 1: The governments announced legislation to merge Niwa a met service

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Speaker 1: and will be introduced later this year. It's all to

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Speaker 1: save money and to streamline our weather forecasting service. The

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Speaker 1: Minister of for State Owned Enterprises, Simeon Brown, says that

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Speaker 1: it makes absolutely no sense to have two separate entities,

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Speaker 1: no kidding. Philip Duncan is the head analyst at weather

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Speaker 1: Watch New Zealand, and he joins me, now, good morning

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Speaker 1: to here.

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Speaker 2: Philip, Good morning Andrew.

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Speaker 1: You're the head analyst, or the only analyst.

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Speaker 2: Pretty much only at these days.

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Speaker 1: Very good okay. Who is better Niwa or met service

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Speaker 1: and who should actually take.

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Speaker 2: Charge met service? They're the ones that are tasked to

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Speaker 2: do the job that we tax fund them to do,

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Speaker 2: and they've got a fairly strong reputation. I know that

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Speaker 2: they've had times over the years where they've got things

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Speaker 2: wrong like we all have, but they're the ones that

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Speaker 2: have pretty much got the infrastructure, and not just that,

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Speaker 2: but the mindset of understanding how to communicate and use

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Speaker 2: the right words at the right time, something that is

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Speaker 2: definitely missing from newa who use quite a stream words

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Speaker 2: quite frequently and find themselves looking a bit silly after

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Speaker 2: the event doesn't come through.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so you would agree the merger is the best outcome.

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Speaker 1: And I think the thing that you would love the

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Speaker 1: most about it is open data sharing. Tell me about that.

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Speaker 2: Yes, if you had open data, we wouldn't be in

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Speaker 2: this problem in the first place, because what would have

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Speaker 2: happened is fifteen years ago. And by the way, it's

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Speaker 2: fantastic to hear the government finally saying what we've been

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Speaker 2: telling them for nearly fifteen years now, and some of

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Speaker 2: them really denied that this was happening. So it's good

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Speaker 2: to see that saying the right words. That's fantastic. But

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Speaker 2: you know, the infrastructure that NIWA has got with their

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Speaker 2: quote unquote supercomputer, which is just a large computer they've got,

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Speaker 2: but that computing power mixed with mat services, rain radar

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Speaker 2: would have produced some really fantastic products from the government itself.

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Speaker 2: But because the government is really bad at sharing stuff

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Speaker 2: from department to department. So I'll give you a good example,

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Speaker 2: many many people in New Zealand volunteered their time to

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Speaker 2: give up where the data, to write it down on

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Speaker 2: little books and seed that into neeware. For many many

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Speaker 2: years now. NEEWA believes that that data that was given

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Speaker 2: by volunteers is their intellectual property and they own it,

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Speaker 2: so they don't share it with anyone then, and you've

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Speaker 2: got met Service on the other side saying the same

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Speaker 2: thing about the rain radar that we all tax funded

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Speaker 2: for them, the public and if they just shared that stuff,

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Speaker 2: you wouldn't need and MEE were competing against met Service,

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Speaker 2: that would never have evolved. Instead, what would have evolved

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Speaker 2: is the New Zealand government having some really amazing products.

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Speaker 2: Open data would fix that and put us online with

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Speaker 2: the rest of the modern world.

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Speaker 1: So basically you're saying a merger will save costs and

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Speaker 1: also come up with better forecasts, and that's all good.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. The only worry I've got is that with this merger,

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Speaker 2: if it's still the same knee, we're management running whatever

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Speaker 2: else they spin out, and then it's just smoke and

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Speaker 2: mirrors and nothing's really been done other than save a

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Speaker 2: few dollars. The public haven't gained anything from that. So

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Speaker 2: I hope that they structure us with a brand fresh

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Speaker 2: new space and management, and also one that's open and transparent,

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Speaker 2: which NIWA definitely has not been. To media outlets and

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Speaker 2: to ministers as well. They've been quite dishonest.

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Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your time today, Philip.

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