Cunliffe DavidHon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): I commend the member who has just resumed his seat Todd Muller and also note my colleague Dr David Clark and his phenomenal opening with those immortal lines of Elton John's. I too had visions as I heard those wonderful words of Steven Joyce in orbit Steven Joyce lost in space or perhaps Steven Joyce as the Martian stranded on the Red Planet" waiting to be rescued. I wondered whether when Steven Joyce falls to earth he would be a meteor or just space junk. I do not know but these are the questions that will confront the House. I was thinking about The Muppet Show and "Pigs in Space" but my mind then turned to Interstellar where time seemed to slow down and it reminded me of one of Steven Joyce's speeches. Then finally my mind turned to Star Wars and what character Steven Joyce would be. That was a hard one because originally I thought of Darth Vader and realised of course that is already taken by Judith Collins.Phil Twyford: Chewbacca.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: It was possibly Chewbacca because of his loquacious nature and the nature of the bill. Right this is a moment that I think we can all celebrate because I think that every New Zealander is not only excited by the concept of New Zealand developing a particular niche as a very suitable launch pad for low-altitude satellites but also celebrating the brilliance of Peter Beck and his Kiwi team. I have to make a slight personal confession in relation to Peter. I have an old friend called Peter Beck an Anglican priest who was the dean of Canterbury Cathedral. In the very early days of hearing about Rocket Lab I thought it was a hobby of that Peter Beck—of course it is not; it is a different Peter—and when I met this Peter I realised just how brilliant he is. The Auckland facility is as secure as anything you will see in New Zealand. As Peter described to me he thought it was as hard to start a $1 million company as a $1 billion company so he thought he would go right ahead bypass the interim steps and go straight to the $1 billion scale. That might sound a ridiculous proposition but he went about it in a very clever way. He went straight to Silicon Valley and engaged with some of the world's largest venture capital foundations like Khosla Ventures and engaged directly with some of the other major players in the rocket industry like Lockheed Martin. He went straight to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. He went straight to NASA. He prototyped first on Great Mercury Island and then more recently with the electron project—small-scale low-cost highly efficient rockets that have the potential to completely disrupt satellite technology. As other members have said this is far from No. 8 wire; this is highly sophisticated computer-based engineering with very fine-tolerance advanced materials but what is really interesting is that it still captures that Kiwi spark I think of "Why can't we do it that way? Why do we have to obey the status quo that everybody else has always followed?".As Peter Beck explained it to me the concept of satellite rockets at the moment—this is obviously language that he has dumbed down for a politician—is like putting a bus in a high-altitude stationary orbit. The revolution in this idea is to put something not the size of a bus but the size of a fridge—as he described it—into a low-altitude rotating orbit. In order for that to be useful for communications and observations you need a mesh network of fridge-sized satellites around the globe which means quite high frequency multiple launches because they have got to get enough up there to form the mesh network. That means at its peak there could literally be a launch every couple of weeks—certainly every month—from Māhia Peninsula which would make it a more frequent launcher of rockets than Cape Canaveral. What are we going to call it—"Cape Kahawai"? I think we will ask Mr Nash to come up with the byline. But this will be a very very significant disruption to space technology if it works. And here is my prediction: it will work. This is a very serious company it has got some very serious backers and we I think across this House wish it well. I do however want to come down for a moment from the pedestal of "Success has a thousand fathers." self-congratulations to say this: it would have been impossible in the current innovation environment for Rocket Lab New Zealand to get going if it had not gone offshore. It is not technically a New Zealand company now; it is a US corporation that just happens to have a New Zealand domicile. There is not sufficient liquidity in the New Zealand innovation system for a scale project like this to get the backing it needs. That is not to say that it is wrong that a highly specialised large-scale project should go to Silicon Valley; I think it is a very smart move. But let us just take a moment amidst all of this glorification of brilliance which is appropriate to remember that New Zealand invests less than half of the OECD average in research and development. So if we want to have a generation of Peter Becks if we want our young people to be world-class inventors and entrepreneurs then we—this generation our generation of policy makers—are going to have to do more about it than just pass this good bill. Yes we support this bill. We are going to make it within responsible limits like our international treaty obligations and security issues as easy as possible for this project to succeed. "Team Kiwi" is behind it. But let us be behind all of the other young Peter Becks who might be at high schools or primary schools around New Zealand or working part-time in a laboratory or part time on their computers. Let us create an innovation ecosystem that is as good as or better than any other of the small smart countries that we seek to associate ourselves with. I do want to commend a project that the Government has backed and that Minister Joyce has backed with Sir Peter Gluckman—the Small Advanced Economies Initiative. This is a group of seven countries about our size—Denmark Israel Taiwan Singapore Ireland and Finland—that have got high-priority innovation ecosystems that do invest around about three times per capita GDP what New Zealand invests and are determined to be high-tech smart high-value economies. We talk the talk but let us face it: in New Zealand we do not yet walk the walk. This bill is great. This bill is a step towards that outcome. But it is not enough on its own. I am sure that if the Government was to come to the House and build upon the progress that was made this year around the innovation budget and say "Let's put this on steroids and let's get some cross-party agreement." it would find it on this side of the House. We are committed we are determined to a future pathway for New Zealand that is smart that is high-tech and that does elevate New Zealand to the top rank of small smart economies. This bill traverses a number of aspects that will be important to allow this project to succeed. Firstly it does cover off on our international obligations: the Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space; the Outer Space Treaty; the Agreement on the Rescue of Astronauts; and the Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects. It does provide a regulatory framework for high-altitude activities and it covers off on national security and national interests. Obviously it has been developed in conjunction with its counterparts at NASA. It does provide an enforcement regime which is credible but not overly prescriptive and we commend that approach. It does seek to futureproof the regime by allowing for the use of regulatory powers to add different technologies to a schedule that would be covered by the bill. I am sure the select committee will want to hear submissions on a number of these issues and from a Regulations Review Committee perspective I just note that there is a fine line between the responsible attempts to futureproof and drifting into a "Henry VIII" type of situation where there is insufficient empowerment in the primary legislation and too much is vested in the regulations. So I think there will be some judgment required around that and that is a job for the select committee to consider and report back to the House on. I commend the Minister of Science and Innovation actually. I have spent a bit of time in this House criticising the Minister—often in good humour—and he takes it well. He works very hard. I do want to say this. I think he has done a good job with this bill. I think we in this House are all determined to see this project succeed as New Zealanders who celebrate New Zealand success and very much welcome tall poppies doing great things on the world stage. Let us join together today. Let us put politics aside. Let us say that we are working together to create a common platform for a fantastic venture that has the potential not only to transform the regional economy but to lift New Zealand into a very special short list of countries that are space-capable—as Peter Beck would say putting fridges in orbit not buses. Thank you.Bill read a first time. Bill referred to the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee."