Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Labour): There was no need to regulate outer space and high-altitude activities in New Zealand until they started to happen so it is a good thing that we are actually having to do this—Hon Simon Bridges: That's pretty deep dude.Hon DAVID PARKER: Pretty deep." he says. Well Minister thank you for that compliment. There is no doubt that the trigger for this has been Rocket Lab's success and on all sides of the House we celebrate that. I know that one of my colleagues recently informed me that some of the technical capability that lies behind this mainly carbon fibre rocket arose out of earlier America's Cup activities where the carbon fibre industry was effectively stimulated by those yachting events in past years. That led to the growth and capability of one of the technologies that is now used by Rocket Lab to send these rockets into space.The legislation is good legislation and Labour supports it but referring to the Minister's comments about how important this sort of thing is for New Zealand's economic growth I think it falls to me to highlight why it is that we need to do better in terms of growing both our exports and our productivity and both of those things are linked.This Government came to office in 2008 on the promise to increase exports from 30 percent to 40 percent of GDP—i.e. exports would become a larger proportion of our economy. Since then in the 9 years that it has been in Government it has overseen a decrease in exports as a proportion of the economy and exports currently sit around 27 percent of GDP—far from having increased from 30 towards 40 percent of GDP they have gone backwards. To the end of the forecast period in the latest Budget documents produced by the Government the forecast is that by the end of that period they still do not even get back to 30 percent of GDP.We have to ask ourselves in this House why that is. Why is it that our exports are falling? A large part of that is because of the poor productivity story that we have in New Zealand. In the last week we have seen two pieces of information in that regard that should be concerning us in the House. The first is that GDP per capita fell 0.1 percent in the March quarter having fallen 0.2 percent in the prior quarter. So that is two quarters in a row where productivity per capita has gone backwards. Per capita per hour worked fell even more by 1.3 percent in the year. So the fact that nominal GDP has gone up has been driven by population increase not by the increasing cleverness of our economy. It has been effectively more people consuming more goods and services in New Zealand that has been the driver of growth. Indeed the key difference was the 2.1 percent rise in population in the year.So the OECD was here doing one of its periodic reports on New Zealand just last week. It looked into this issue and it made the point that New Zealand's productivity growth is poor and it is worse than Australia's. Again we should be holding the Government to account for the poor export and productivity performance: exports going backwards as a percentage of the economy and productivity growth being very very lacklustre. The OECD said that we cannot rely upon the likes of the outer space bill to fix that and we actually need economy-wide measures. It says amongst its recommendations last week that we need to review the tax system—we know that we have got some terrible tax imbalances in New Zealand driving investor prices paid for housing in Auckland ever higher because of the tax advantages people get holding houses for speculative capital gains whilst we have got under-investment in the productive economy. So it says we should be looking at those issues as a country.Further it says that Government should be increasing its spending in subsidies for research and development expenditure and one of the big differences between this side of the House and the Opposition and the Government benches is that we think that we should have a research and development tax credit so that there is a tax incentive for greater investment in research and development. This is because despite the success of Rocket Lab as a country we are still one of the poor performers in the OECD when it comes to investment in research and development.So this bill good though it is in respect of regulating activities that are firing objects into high altitude or into space does not do anything substantial to cure those problems that are at the heart of New Zealand's low productivity which affects people in their daily lives because wage growth for two-thirds of New Zealanders in the last year was lower than inflation. That is what happens when you have poor productivity growth: the economy cannot afford to pay people higher wages in real terms. That is the consequence of the last 9 years of economic management or mismanagement by the current Government.In respect of the details of this bill one of the changes that was recommended by submitters to the bill—we have other actors in the New Zealand economy who are concerned with outer space and high-altitude activities notably around Invercargill where for some years they have had a space monitoring station there which was co-funded by the European Space Agency because that satellite tracking station can monitor satellite activity in the southern skies in a way that cannot be done from more northerly parts of the world. The Southland economic development unit—that is not its correct name but that is the nature of its role—Dr Megan Woods: Venture Southland.Hon DAVID PARKER: Venture Southland thank you Dr Woods. Venture Southland with funding from the European Space Agency set up this space tracking station south of Invercargill which brings some revenue into the area. It made the point that if New Zealand is going to be regulating this space we have to make it clear to people that our intentions are peaceful. We are not North Korea. We are not trying to increase armaments out in outer space. We are not intending to put into space things that could shoot down other satellites. Our objectives are entirely peaceful. That was not altogether clear on the face of the wording in the original bill which referred rather blandly to our international obligations but did not describe what they were.In fact the international obligations that are now referred to in the purpose clause clause 3 of the bill record the obligations now in the Outer Space Treaty which is an international treaty under the United Nations to which we are a party. Those obligations include not to launch things that are weapons of mass destruction or nuclear not to establish military bases and not to test any weapons in space. These are emphasising that our intentions in respect of what we are doing are civil.There are some things that of course can be used for both things. If you put a satellite into space that is used for global positioning purposes then those global positioning services could be used for both military and non-military uses. You cannot go so far as to effectively regulate anything that is going to space for global positioning because it could of course always be used for both purposes. But the intention is with this legislation that it be non-military.There are also rules that are being imposed through permits. Because the number of satellites is proliferating and a tiny little piece of a satellite travelling very fast can whack a hole in another satellite or knock it off its orbit or ruin it we have got to be very careful that we are not creating additional junk in space. So the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee looked into how the relevant licensing provisions in this legislation will cause New Zealand to do its bit to make sure that we are not increasing the amount of space junk up there that can cause danger to other satellites that are already in orbit.So with those comments I am pleased to record that the Labour Party is supportive of the Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Bill. Like other members of the House we congratulate Peter Beck and the other inventors who lie behind this marvellous technology. There was a story told to me recently where someone was advertising in the United States for a prize for the first person in the world to 3-D print a pump. Of course that is what this company has already done. It has used 3-D technology to print in smaller form a form of electrical pump to pump the fuel from where the fuel is stored in the rocket to where it is burned in the rocket. That is only able to be done on the small scale because of the innovation shown by this wonderful company."