Mallard Trevor; Graham KennedyThe ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Dr Kennedy Graham.Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It is a split call right? My understanding is that this is a split call.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Yes. The Greens only ever have 5 minutes at this point anyway. So yes.Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM: That is my understanding. Normally I am told it is a split call so I just wanted to make sure.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): It is a 5-minute call—as the Greens' second call is on the first reading of this bill.Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I just want to reiterate what the Green Party has already said—mainly that we will be supporting this bill to the select committee. It is important that our enthusiasm does not run beyond that and imply any unreflective commitment to innovation for its own sake and that we reflect upon the procedural bordering on constitutional shortcomings by which this bill lands itself in the House in front of us today. Let us reflect briefly on the history of this bill. There is a New Zealand firm called Rocket Lab which is highly regarded—and I participate in that regard for the firm—and it has developed a technology. The technology is putting a payload into space from New Zealand. That in itself on the face of it is a good thing. The company dealt with the United States and with New Zealand Government departments—largely the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE)—for the better part of 18 months to get to an agreement by which it would be able to operate a missile launch along the lines intended from the East Coast sometime in mid-2016. It was discovered very late in the piece to their consternation that the nature of this technology fell within the missile technology control regime category 1 which then triggered a policy requirement on the part of the United States that there should be a bilateral treaty with any other host country that fell within that category. New Zealand therefore did. This then followed with negotiations which were not made public between the New Zealand Government and the US Government for the better part of 6 months to get a bilateral treaty that is essentially a template taken from the United States' shelf and dusted off. There are strange numbers on the top right that have not been removed and the words New Zealand" have clearly been imprinted substituting for whatever other country might have been relevant the last time around. It is a bilateral treaty between the United States and New Zealand governing essentially the national security interests of the United States. Suddenly that treaty went through Cabinet—in December from memory. It was not announced. Suddenly in June the MBIE website emblazoned itself with the better part of 80 to 100 pages of hyperactive enthusiasm about this announcing also that the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee of the Parliament had opened hearings on the matter. It had not. It did so on the following day on the basis basically of 24 hours' notice from the Government department by way of a public website. It was yet another humiliation of the Parliament of New Zealand—by no means the first in the last year or two but another one. The Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee had this treaty on its desk within a few days off a public website from MBIE. The chairman announced to the members that we would be focusing on it very quickly and very earnestly. I evinced criticism of the procedure at the time. The committee was actually shown the bill in a closed session to allay whatever concerns there might be. I will just conclude on the fact that there was initially a planned launch date. It was August 2016. Do I apologise on behalf of the New Zealand Parliament to the New Zealand public that because of the constitutional nicety of getting something through the New Zealand legislature Rocket Lab cannot proceed with the launch date at the time that suits it? There is a great deal in this bilateral treaty through the treaty examination stage and the domestic implementation that requires a lot of thorough checking and a lot of careful reflection because New Zealand national security is as important as US national security."