Shearer DavidDAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): My colleagues and I will be supporting this bill through to the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee and we look forward to receiving submissions on it. Certainly from the Labour side we will be supporting this bill as much as we obviously can particularly as it is a result of the fine work as has been said of Peter Beck and his company Rocket Lab. I first came into contact with Peter Beck about 6 years ago when he was launching one of his prototypes from Great Mercury Island with the help of Sir Michael Fay. It was a successful launch although as far as I know they did not get the nose cone back again. But it certainly went as they had planned. Since then—and before then as well actually because much of the earlier work was facilitated by Trevor Mallard while he was the economic development Minister in terms of moving that through the legislative process—it has been picked up by this Government quite rightly and carried on. As my colleague David Clark said this project will have many fathers if it is successful. There are many politicians who will want to try to claim a little bit of that success. Peter Beck I have to say is an extraordinary character in the sense that he has had a passion from a very young age and has seen this through. His qualification is that of toolmaker—from Otago Polytechnic as I understand it or maybe the Southern Institute of Technology—but he certainly is a toolmaker. I remember speaking to him about his qualifications and he said that at one point he contemplated going to Auckland University and doing a Bachelor of Engineering. He went and saw them and they said: Well yeah OK but unfortunately you're going to have to start at stage 1 engineering." He thought long and hard about that and they said: "But perhaps you could lecture our Master's class in rocket technology." He thought: "Well if I'm teaching rocket technology at a Master's level do I really need to go back and do a full Bachelor's degree?" To his great credit he did not and he joins that league of New Zealand entrepreneurs inventors and people who have got a passion and are able somehow in this country to be able to see that through. I remember at the time of the rocket launch off Great Mercury Island saying to him "I can understand what you are doing. Obviously this is a terrific project. I mean what sort of competition are you going to come up against?" and he said: "Well there are other competitors out there." I said "Like who?" and he said: "For example like NASA." I said: "Oh I actually have heard of NASA before and that is pretty illustrious competition to be in—when you are in that league." As he explained his vision was for a commercial enterprise quite different from the rockets that were being blasted off at that time. Most of the rockets that had been sent up into space previously were modified missiles from the United States. They were considerably larger than what Peter Beck wanted to put up into space and therefore considerably much more expensive and they sat on a waiting list probably for 3 or 4 years before they were able to get clearance and get a window in which they were able to be shot up. His vision was very different. It was for smaller payloads with some very exciting technology around fuel and the engines that he was deploying. They were much lighter and he was able to get a rocket into space much more cheaply. Of course that was what made it so attractive for so many companies that want to put a rocket into space. So he has orders already—before he has even had that launch. He has got an order book that is pretty full with orders from companies like telecommunication company Samsung and others for putting up low-level satellites communications facilities etc. They want to get their names on Rocket Lab's list so that when this does prove itself as I am sure it will they are in the line if you like—in the queue—for being able to get their technology up and into low space. New Zealand does have a number of opportunities and advantages. Obviously we have got somebody like Peter Beck—we have got his vision for the lightweight rockets—but we have also as somebody has said got a country that is isolated surrounded by ocean and therefore ideal for firing off a rocket from Māhia Peninsula. It was originally intended to go down to Christchurch in fact—into Canterbury. Unfortunately that did not occur because the various actors in Christchurch could not come to an agreement. So Māhia and the eastern coast of the North Island are going to be the winners in this. We hope that the launch is successful. I think we have to be realistic as Peter Beck said to me when I went through his facility near the airport the other day. He said that 80 percent of all new rockets fail. I hope he proves to be in the 20 percent but the chance is that there are going to be some teething problems before this takes off. But it is pretty exciting. If you look at what we have in front of us we will be one of maybe a dozen countries in the world that has a rocket industry—that is a space industry. As Peter Beck says himself per capita we have more rocket scientists in New Zealand than any other country in the world right now. It is truly remarkable. Coming to this legislation in the last 1 or 2 minutes I have I think that what we need to do in terms of ensuring that there is a solid regulatory and legislative framework for an industry like this that meets our international requirements is make sure that we are able to do that properly within New Zealand. The New Zealand Government is currently negotiating an agreement with the United States Government to enable Rocket Lab to access technology that the United States has which will enable Rocket Lab to function much more effectively and to cut the corners—certainly in terms of a lot of the technology that it does not currently have. To do that we have to have an agreement that binds us and obligates us never to pass this technology on to a third party and to conform to a number of requirements which frankly having had a look at this agreement you would call pretty fair and pretty straightforward. Once we have that and once we are able to launch a rocket we will need the legislative backing to ensure that we adhere to all the various space and technology treaties that we are obligated to operate under. When we have done that through the legislation that we are passing today we will also sort out some of the issues around what happens with insurance etc. if one of these rockets does actually go off course. We do not like to think about that but those sorts of things are necessary within the legislation. Lastly from what we can see the drafters of the legislation have necessarily taken a rather permissive approach rather than a deep dark regulatory approach to this legislation. In other words they are trying to make it as open as possible knowing that we do not want this legislation coming back to the House in 2 years' time to change the regulation. It has been done in an open-handed sort of way. We will look at that and we will hear from the various submitters and hopefully Rocket Lab itself to make sure that we are getting it in the right ballpark and getting it right so that we are enabling Rocket Lab—Peter Beck and his enterprise and perhaps the spin-off companies that come from that—to do their job and put New Zealand on the map as a rocket-launching nation. It is pretty exciting stuff. With that I once again say that the Labour Party will be supporting this bill through to the select committee."