Nash StuartSTUART NASH (Labour—Napier): One thing that I do want to say is to Mr Jonathan Young. I hope you were not taking credit for this or I hope you were not suggesting that your Government should take credit for this. It is one of the reasons why I am pleased that the honourable member Mr Mallard is in the Chair for the third reading. He will be the Speaker who passes this through. The reason I say that is—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member will resume his seat. We have had a previous ruling from me on this issue. While I would express some gratitude to the member what he is doing is out of order. The member must not bring the Chair into the debate.STUART NASH: Thank you very much Mr Assistant Speaker. What I would like to say is that I am very pleased that the Hon Trevor Mallard is still here to see this bill pass through the House because Mr Mallard is in fact responsible for—Hon Member: He's still doing it.STUART NASH: No I am not talking about the Speaker; I am talking about the member. But I am pleased that that member is listening because it is the first time; she might learn something. But anyway Mr Mallard is actually responsible personally responsible—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am going to tell the member that he has got to be a bit more circuitous and he cannot bring me into this debate—not just where I am sitting but because I am sitting here he cannot bring me into the debate.STUART NASH: Not as a member?Hon Member: No.STUART NASH: OK.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I will give the member some advice: he could say the former Minister for Economic Development".STUART NASH: OK. Thank you. Let me start again. I have got 8½ minutes—let me start again. I am very pleased that the former Labour Minister for Economic Development is here to see this bill pass through the House. The reason I say that is Peter Beck the CEO of Rocket Lab—because let us be honest; this is about enabling Rocket Lab—does publicly acknowledge that it was in fact that former Minister for Economic Development who provided his company with the necessary finance to get this off the ground—that former Minister.I visited Peter Beck not too long ago and went through his facility and it is absolutely astounding. It really is. This is the third time that I have spoken on this bill in the House. Apart from Labour members—David Shearer I think was one of the ones who spoke on this originally—I have been actually astounded at the lack of enthusiasm by the Government but also by New Zealand First and the Greens about what is going on in Māhia Peninsula.This is game-changing for New Zealand. I have heard the Greens talk about "treaty" and I have heard Dr Kennedy Graham—with all due respect—say: "Well don't think that we're supporting this because we do it with a whole lot of reservations etc. etc." I have heard Steven Joyce sit there and read a monologue as if this were an imposition on his time to come down here. I have heard New Zealand First say: "Well this is really bad. We've given this company a whole lot of money and now they're overseas-owned."What they fail to recognise is what Rocket Lab and Peter Beck have actually created what they have done in New Zealand. They have put us on the world map here. And this is not done out of—well it is done out of Auckland but these rockets are being launched from Māhia Peninsula. And the wonderful thing about this in Wairoa which is in my electorate is that for the first time in a long time the stories that are coming out of Wairoa are fantastic. It is not about gang members or anything bad; it is about a really good-news story about how a council saw an opportunity—and it did—and said: "We can't let this go. We've really got to take advantage of this." and goodness me. The CEO Fergus Power and the mayor Craig Little said: "How do we make this happen?".The interesting thing is that Rocket Lab had been working down in Christchurch to get a consent. When I first spoke to Peter I think it had taken about 9 months and they still had not got the consent. The Wairoa District Council issued the consent in something like 2 weeks. It was not because they did not do the work. It was not because they were lax or anything like that. It was because they saw an opportunity; they understood the potential and they thought: "In terms of driving growth in our area we have got to engage with these guys and we've really got to make it happen." It is a classic case of local government almost moving literally heaven and earth to work with a stakeholder and a company that can drive value and drive growth. I have no doubt that this will be over the medium to long term fantastic for the East Coast and for Wairoa.It will start off with space tourism. I mean who does not want to see a rocket take off—goodness me. Peter Beck's vision is to have one of these rockets launched every single week—every single week. So it will start off with tourism and then built around tourism comes the infrastructure hotels cafes and then out of that comes the retail stores. And then out of that you get the hundred men and women who are based in the district working for Rocket Lab earning significant amounts of money sending their kids to the local schools buying TVs fridges houses and all those things that they need. This is really good and it is happening in Māhia and it is happening in the Wairoa district. So I take my hat off to the Wairoa District Council on this.Let us move forward to Peter Beck's vision. Who did not grow up and want to be a fireman or an astronaut or something along these lines? Well this guy has taken it to the nth degree. It is astounding. You go through Rocket Lab's factory and it just blows your mind. The processes that they have had to go through are just astounding and they are so minute because of course if one little thing goes wrong if they get one little rubber screw or washer wrong—boom—millions and millions of dollars up in smoke. And they have not quite got it right and they acknowledge that. It did not quite go as high as it should have. But for all intents and purposes this was a huge success.They have basically tapped out New Zealand for the experts in this area. They have gone to all the universities and they have mopped up all the really bright graduates. They have gone overseas. We talk about a war for talent; well there is a global war for talent in this area and they want to work for Peter Beck. They want to do it in New Zealand. That is why Rocket Lab is the first non-Government or private organisation to send a rocket into space. The other thing that they have done is they have tapped out every single manufacturer of materials that they can use in this country so it is not as if they have just gone in and imported everything and made it and taken off.Every single machine shop that has the expertise and the precision to produce something for Rocket Lab to go into these rockets it has used. It has got to the point where the capacity in this country just does not exist to take it to the next level. If it did then it would and I have no doubt that there are a number of businesses associated with Rocket Lab that will end up growing substantially. It is like the car businesses in Detroit. You know you have the massive big car makers and then around them you have the guys who make the seatbelts and the washers and every single little industry around that. I think that in the long term this is what we will see because we are talking about 52 launches a year.This will redefine space. It will redefine how data is transmitted. Our kids—or our grandkids anyway; some of our great-grandkids—will not believe that there were points in time where we did not have mobile coverage. They will not believe that you used to go to the top of a hill and wave your mobile phone around to try to get reception because this is the sort of technology where in the deep dark depths of Africa you will be able to get the same level of service as you get in Napier which is the best in the world.Carmel Sepuloni: You can't get it in Bethells.STUART NASH: No you cannot get it at Bethells Beach. We remember those times. We remember times when you used mobile phones to make phone calls heaven forbid. My daughter does not know that you can actually make phone calls on mobile phones.I suppose my point is that this is not just about rockets OK? This is not just about a really innovative and aspirational Kiwi who is making rockets. This is about redefining the way that business will be done in this country. Some of the stories that Peter Beck has told around the requirements of customers and what they are going to do with the data when they receive it from the satellites that Peter is putting up there just blows your mind. Now I do not know whether that is confidential or not so I am not going to talk about them here but one thing I would say is I think this bill is one of the most exciting bills to come through the House in my time both in the initial 3 years and in these 3 years because it is transformational. It really is transformational. I think that in 10 years' time we will look back and we probably do not realise now just how transformational this will be in terms of data.I just want to say that I am incredibly supportive of this. There were some checks and balances of course. I mean we do not want people launching nuclear weapons—and the bottom line is that the site that sends these rockets into space can also launch intercontinental ballistic missiles so we had to be a little bit careful in the legislation that we did not allow that sort of thing because it is not really in the national interest. So there are national interest tests; the Minister has quite a lot of discretion about whether to grant a licence or not. There are the checks and balances in place to make sure that this is not used—or space is not used—for the wrong reasons.I would just like to wrap up by saying congratulations to Peter Beck. It is absolutely fantastic. We are watching your progress. Congratulations to the Wairoa District Council; it has done an absolutely brilliant job and I take my hat off to it. Congratulations to the former Labour Minister for Economic Development because without his vision I doubt we would be sitting here. Without his vision I doubt Rocket Lab would be based in Auckland so congratulations to him as well. Thank you."