Hughes GarethGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou kia ora. Ever since the first gunpowder rockets from 13th century Sung China through to the work of Robert Goddard in the 1920s through to New Zealand's own Pickering who headed up the Jet Propulsion Laboratory we have come an immense long way over history. I do not want to sound ageist at all but there are probably some members in this Chamber who were members during the first Telstar TV satellite transmission in 1962. I know it has changed my life in terms of GPS and in terms of access to new content like Netflix.Everyone on this planet is influenced by space and it is great to be in this Parliament discussing space legislation particularly in light of the fact that New Zealand could be benefiting could be leading and could be exporting technology around the world. I think it is a wonderful success story. It is pretty amazing that we as a species have set foot on the moon that we have dropped probes on to Mars and that we have sent our first probe out to Pluto with the New Horizons mission. We have even got spacecraft that have exited our solar system with the Voyager probes. We truly are a spacefaring species and New Zealand I guess is now joining the ranks of those spacefaring nations.We heard from the member David Shearer that there are only about a dozen nations that actually have orbital space capabilities. New Zealand is the only one that is doing it entirely privately on the back of Rocket Lab so it is an incredibly exciting story. It is an exciting time. You have got SpaceX doing its thing in the States along with Blue Origin. Just yesterday we saw a couple of taikonauts head up to Tiangong the Chinese space station. It is an incredibly exciting time. It is great for New Zealand to be involved and to be honest that is built on the backs of a couple of inspiring exciting New Zealanders Peter Beck and Mark Rocket at the amazing innovative exciting Rocket Lab.Everyone else is sharing the stories of their interactions and I would like to share mine. I am so proud telling people overseas about the story of New Zealanders because so few people know that right next to Auckland Airport there is a warehouse where New Zealand is pioneering the nanosatellite: small- to medium-scale orbital rocket technology. It was incredible to walk around the facility and see the 3-D-printed rocket engine which is part of the amazing advantages over some of the old incumbent rocket launchers. It is incredible to see this happening right next to the Auckland Airport in little old New Zealand—to see the launchers—and it is going to be fantastic to see the Electron rocket take off. Rocket Lab has noticed that there is a gap in the market for the nanosatellites and for more frequent cheaper launchers and I wish it all the best.I think it is important not to forget that this is not the only space thing happening in New Zealand. We have our role with the Square Kilometre Array. Southland and Invercargill are actually doing monitoring operations for the European Space Agency. We have a history of space enterprise and it is great to see that continue albeit on a much greater level.I want to concentrate on the bill because it is incredibly important and quite technical and complex. Effectively what this legislation does is create a regulatory regime for the permitting and the certification of launchers including the payloads. The way the Government has gone about it is I think on merit probably the most appropriate way. I think it has learnt the lessons from what the Aussies did last century in the late 1990s. This is more of a permissive regime because it acknowledges that the technology is moving so fast that a more permissive regime is probably the wiser option. It gives the responsible Minister the ability to tailor the conditions of a licence or permit in order to take account of particular circumstances. It does put a lot of power into the Minister's hands but the rationale we think is convincing.The legislation signs up to a number of international obligations including the Technology Safeguards Agreement (TSA) and the Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space from 1975—this quite simply allows the New Zealand Government to meet its requirements to register objects that we are launching. And of course under the Space Liability Convention ratified in 1974 the Government is effectively responsible for what these private companies are doing. The legislation deals with the regime for liability but also with insurance issues because as we know rockets do not always go up the first time.I am quite staggered that clause 76 has not been mentioned at all by members. There are a few concerns the Green Party has with this legislation. We share the sentiment of members that we celebrate the work of Rocket Lab. We want to see it thrive. We want to see more advanced smart manufacturing and intellectual property. We want to see more space enterprises. But we do have concerns with the legislation.When you look at clause 76 it deals with what happens if there is a launch failure. Clause 76 comes directly from article 8(3) of the Technology Safeguards Agreement which basically is a requirement from the US Government if we want to launch US payloads or access US technology. I want to read it out because I am staggered that not a single member has raised this point in the debate so far. Under clause 76 Taking photographs etc or samples from debris recovery area" it says that a person commits an offence if the person in the debris area "(a) takes any photograph makes any sketch plan model or note or otherwise records any image of any thing … in a debris recovery area;". This is quite staggeringly large in its scope.I note that in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vetting the Attorney-General looked at various clauses in the legislation—for example clause 77 which deals with interfering with the launch vehicle and where there is a breach of human rights but the Attorney-General said it is justified. Or you could look at where a launch can be stopped by the Minister by issuing a certificate based on national security concerns but the person cannot go to court—the certificate cannot be judicially reviewed. Again the Attorney-General said that it is justified despite ostensibly breaching the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. But this clause clause 76 is not mentioned at all.I find it staggering to consider that anyone could come across a bit of a downed rocket that accidentally failed and it would be impossible to sketch it or to take a photograph. This comes of course from the US Government—from the Technology Safeguards Agreement—so my question is: what is the justification for this clause? Because it is not mentioned at all in the regulatory impact statement. In fact it is noted in that document that the TSA is an obligation of an "absolute nature". What is the reason? Is it to protect intellectual property? Is it to safeguard people? Is it a health and safety issue? Is it a non-proliferation issue? We go into it with an open mind because perhaps there is a good justification for it. I note it is not the language or wording used in the TSA so have officials simply been quite zealous to think of every potential possibility of how a person could interact with space debris? You know could they have used interactive interpretive dance as something to include in clause 76? So we will be looking at that.You also see experts like Dr Pozza raising questions about why "outer space" as a term was not explicitly defined. Given that this is the outer space bill it is possibly an important point. That is something that we look forward to working on with the submitters—working with experts—because ultimately what the Green Party wants to see is a good robust high-quality legislative Act that gives a good regulatory regime to protect the environment to protect health and safety and to protect intellectual property. But we do not want to go overboard with some perhaps Cold War - mind-sets in terms of not allowing people to sketch or model something that comes across their beach.As someone from the East Coast who grew up in Gisborne—Dad had a farm up in Whangarā—it is great to see Māhia benefiting. It is awesome to see that community benefit and I hope that it makes the most of it.Just to summarise we think this is a good example of the smart modern economy that New Zealand should be focusing on. There is a limit to the number of tourists we can cram into Fiordland. There is a limit to the number of cows we can cram into our paddocks—and we are seeing those limits in our waterways. There is no limit to the smart ideas the services the intellectual property and the software that we could be exporting. This is the richer future for New Zealand and I think this legislation is a great exemplar. Best wishes to Rocket Lab—to Peter Beck and all his team. I think it is fascinating and exciting stuff what they are doing but let us do our job in this House to make sure that the legislation is as good as it can be and that we are asking those questions that result from clause 76. Kia ora."