Hughes GarethGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou kia ora. I rise to support this bill in its third reading which establishes the launch regime for companies such as Rocket Lab which is going to be launching its 17-metre carbon fibre Electron rockets into orbit something this whole House can join in congratulating.There is a famous photograph in my office one that is a personal inspiration to me and in fact was an inspiration for the movement that saw the Green Party grow and rise around the world. It is the famous Earthrise photograph. Taken from space from the Apollo 8 capsule in 1968 it showed the Earth rising above the barren hostile vastness of the moon. For the first time you could see the fragility of Earth. I raise this because the issue we are debating here is around the permitting regime for launching rockets into space—what we can get out of the economic spin-offs the jobs the GDP etc. The other thing we can get out of exploring space is knowledge about ourselves knowledge about our world and in fact the growing environmental consciousness we have seen in the decades since the Apollo space programme.This is a good bill. We have managed to improve it in the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee. I would like to acknowledge all the submitters and the officials involved. There are three key areas I would like to touch on where the bill has been improved. The first is related to how the space race started at the height of the Cold War years after the launch of sputnik. It was seen primarily as an offensive or defensive technology. What we have managed to include in this bill is a more modern understanding of the uses of space which is a peaceful use of space. While the Green Party and the Labour Party were pushing incredibly hard for an explicit purpose clause for the peaceful uses of space we were not able to get that through. But what the committee was able to reach by consensus was some very specific language that it is prohibited to place into orbit any nuclear weapons or weapons of mass instruction; establish military bases installations or fortifications on celestial bodies:" or test any types of weapons or manoeuvres in space. That was a significant improvement on the original bill.Secondly an area close to my heart in the Green Party is the issue of orbital debris. There are 20000 objects out there orbiting in space that are larger than a baseball. There are 500000 objects larger than the size of a marble. If you have seen the film Gravity you will understand the Kessler effect where we can see potentially catastrophic impacts of these space objects. Already there is quite a huge cost involved in space junk as it is called but it could cause a catastrophic change literally to our world's use of technology if in fact it did go all pear-shaped as we saw in the film Gravity. So it is good that this has been addressed. It was a little bit of an oversight in the original legislation that the Minister for Economic Development had not been cognisant of an orbital debris mitigation plan but it is good that that has been included.The third area of course is the debris protection areas that a Minister can enact if there has been an accident. This is the scenario where debris has actually been scattered across a beach or a farm or at sea. In the first reading we raised some significant concerns on the limits to human rights and limits to media reporting if a debris protection zone was enacted. Of course this comes from our international obligations under the Technology Safeguards Agreement (TSA) that because these are basically intercontinental ballistic missiles you want to protect the sensitive technology within the spacecraft. We think that is entirely reasonable. We do not want to see nuclear technology or the means by which it can be carried proliferate across the world and we are happy that it has been clarified that the media reporting can still happen outside. Basically the gist is that you do not want to see photographs appear on the news or be shared online of sensitive technology where we could see significant nuclear weapons harm occur in the future. We think that is entirely reasonable. It is a good bill. It is an exciting industry that is potentially going to flourish and we have seen some improvements in the select committee for which I would like to thank the members.I am tremendously excited by the potential for Rocket Lab. As we have heard from other members we have actually seen New Zealand join the space race as only the 11th nation to have reached orbit. I remember travelling overseas and telling people of this fact that we were the 11th nation and in fact the only nation to have done it without a national space agency; for example NASA in the US. We are the only country to have done it entirely privately. It is good to see we have now got some Government R & D support for Rocket Lab as well. It is tremendously exciting and people were blown away overseas.They were doubly blown away when I said that we were launching carbon fibre rockets. They thought it was incredibly difficult technology to master but when I said this is how we have our yachts being built for the America's Cup for example they were doubly blown away. It is a good example of how investing in new technology and innovation can spur new sectors of our economy. I am rightfully proud of New Zealand. We have got some amazing examples of technological innovation occurring in our economy and in fact since 2002 to 2013 this was the fastest-growing area as a percentage of GDP of any OECD or developed world economy. We should be rightfully proud of some of our champions like Xero Rocket Lab etc. right at the forefront of these new technological industries.When you look at space it is a $256 billion global industry employing more than 900000 people in 2013. It is exciting to think that New Zealand could get a chunk of that and we are going to see spin-off industries hopefully in terms of micro-satellites science education—it is fantastic. The challenge for New Zealanders is that we have got some great exemplars but how do we transition to an actual innovation economy because we are still dependent on a few raw commodities for the bulk of our exports and we still invest less than half of the developed world average in research and development. Our scientists patent four times less than the developed world average. If there is a space race in terms of innovation and technology we are not getting at the forefront where New Zealanders want us to be.Moving on though we are going to see the launch of a space industry in New Zealand which all New Zealanders I hope can be excited by. But if we stop and think globally there is $1.6 trillion annually invested in militaries. Often I have the debate with people: is space a good thing to be investing in when there are so many problems on Earth? I would say look when you see the $1.6 trillion invested just on arms and warfare around the world—if we could cut that back there is more than enough to feed clothe house give power to everyone and still explore space. When you look at the US it spends $600 billion on its military representing 3.3 percent of its GDP; it spent just $20 billion or 0.1 percent of its GDP on space in 2016.There is so much still to learn out in space. We are discovering extra solar planets. Just in the last year we have seen gravitational waves potentially confirmed. There are still huge questions about how our planets were formed in this solar system. We have seen spin-offs—NASA rightfully and proudly points to Tang teflon and Velcro as some of the spin-off technologies but there have been a host more that we use in our day-to-day lives. One of them that I think has been the most profound is solar technology from that first Vanguard satellite launched into space with the solar panels attached. Across my lifetime we have seen the costs of solar drop 99 percent and now we are seeing the growth of clean renewable electricity so that we do not have to burn coal.From our exploration of space we have learnt more about our planet in terms of environmental satellites. We have discovered that there are thousands of planets in outer space many in the Goldilocks zone where water can exist but when you look at our neighbours—look at Mars a planet that ran out of atmosphere that did not have enough carbon dioxide and that got too cold for life. Our other nearest planet Venus is a planet that has too much carbon dioxide. It literally is as hot as the surface of the Sun on Venus—too much carbon dioxide. It is a salutary lesson for us to make sure that we can keep our planet in balance.Likewise in the last 10 years we have discovered water on Mercury on Pluto and vast oceans on moons like Io—a good example that while water is all around our solar system and potentially all around the universe it is our water on Earth that we need to protect. That is why this year the Green Party is championing the two-thirds of our rivers and streams in New Zealand that are considered unsafe for our kids to swim in. So as we go explore the vast reaches of space as we start a space industry in New Zealand and as we learn more about what is out there let us also act more on what is on our planet and protect it. Kia ora."