Prime Minister’s Space Prize - Student Endeavour Award
It is particularly exciting to announce that Year 12 Southland Girls High School student Sophie Ineson has been awarded the $50,000 Space Prize - Student Endeavour Award by Prime Minister Chris Luxon and myself, as Space Minister.
Sophie’s prize is for her project that focuses on how wounds heal in space. She's designed ways to prevent infection within the context of microgravity, low-pressure, antibiotic-resistant bacteria and lunar dust. She considered both medical and engineering concepts which will be essential to space exploration and targeted the goal of developing new wound dressings that incorporate natural materials, sourced from Southland, for future Artemis missions.
Panel members were impressed with her initiative, determination, and critical thinking, and the sheer amount of testing she managed to complete and analyse. The Prime Minister was impressed with Sophie’s forward thinking and sophisticated approach which holds great promise for a space application as well as the future of health here on Earth.
Chief executive of Dawn Aerospace, Christchurch Stefan Powell won the Excellence Award and a $100,000 prize for his company’s ongoing research and development.
Papakura High School Prize giving
More locally, I was pleased that the Judith Collins Cup for Leadership was awarded to Keira Barron Morton this year. Keira is involved in sports leadership within the School and also with Counties Manukau Sport teams where she is a committed referee and team manager for boys’ rugby. She has a very busy life and is great role model for others both within the School and the wider community. I congratulate her and wish her lots of success in her future leadership roles.
Strengthening the role of Kiwisaver
Last weekend the Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced that a National government will gradually increase employees’ and employers’ KiwiSaver contributions to 6 per cent each, so that by 2032, 12 per cent of the earnings of each of us will be building a nest egg for a retirement with better choices. It won’t be compulsory to contribute 6 per cent because for some people at certain times of their life, that’s too high. However, the incentive is that if you can manage it, your employer will match you and eventually retirement will be a welcome, positive and worry-free option. If you’d like to read the Prime Minister’s speech, it’s
here.
Tariff Relief
As many New Zealanders are working hard to keep their businesses and employment going and growing at the moment, it is great news that the USA administration is removing reciprocal tariffs from a range of New Zealand agricultural products including beef, and offal products, kiwifruit, avocadoes, berries and some fruit. These products represent about 25 per cent of our trade with the USA which amounts to about NZ$2.21billion annually.
This development will be welcomed by exporters, farmers and growers for whom there will be a $330million saving in the proposed additional tariffs now reduced back to, on average, 0.3 per cent.
Minister of Agriculture Todd McClay is realistic that other tariffs remain in place, and therefore he is continuing to work with his US trade counterpart USTR Jamieson Greer to make the case that New Zealand’s trading relationship with the US is balanced and that the additional reciprocal tariffs on other New Zealand exports should also be removed.
