Hobbs Marian: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Hobbs Marian: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:627;Page:22019] 
Hon MARIAN HOBBS (Associate Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Official Development Assistance)) 
: 
 I am very happy to speak to Vote Foreign Affairs and Trade as it includes NZAID. But before I do I want to make reference to the capability review carried out by the State Services Commission working with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade because I am really concerned. Over the last few weeks and months we have heard this whole story about tax cuts and we have been told that the simple way to fund tax cuts is to cut the bureaucracy. Those who tell us this refer to the bureaucracy as “pen-pushers”. They totally forget the bureaucracy that represents us overseas—our diplomats whom we call on absolutely in times of urgency. I will refer to that in a minute. 
The capability review was done. As a result of the capability review which is referred to in the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee’s report on the estimates a 5-year funding package was designed to enhance the ministry’s capability in areas crucial to Government security and prosperity priorities. I would like to know whether if any party but Labour forms a Government it will honour such funding that has gone into protecting New Zealand’s interests. 
There were five main areas of increased funding. One was simply remuneration. If we are asking people to do trading deals we need them to be good lawyers. If we are asking people to define the marine areas between Australia and New Zealand we need them to be good international lawyers. They do not come cheaply and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has to compete out there with private enterprise and overseas organisations. Remuneration meant that we were losing a number of really highly qualified people into areas of private enterprise. 
We also need good infrastructure. By that I mean that it is too easy to bomb undefended buildings owned by embassies in some of the more exciting places around the world. Therefore we have to protect the people who work for us overseas. Some of them had not been well protected. Their infrastructure had been left to run down. It was very important that we dealt with that. 
This includes information technology. I could take members into some of our overseas embassies and find the room that contains the machine that sends messages overseas and the axe that is on the wall in case this room is invaded—I saw it in Vienna—in which case one takes the axe to the machine and breaks it down so that the information cannot be coded and sent back to New Zealand. Information technology inside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs— 
Darren Hughes 
: I bet the National Party caucus wishes it had that system. 
Hon MARIAN HOBBS 
: It may well do. This information technology really needed to be updated. Quite seriously we had people unable to communicate with each other easily inside our foreign embassies. 
Then of course we have training particularly training in languages. The world is increasingly getting smaller but the languages are still different. Under a previous Government language training was savagely cut. We have replaced that training. We have restored the capability of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. This is called public service. This restoration of ability is in danger from parties that say they will cut the public service. They have talked only about not cutting some things in health and education but this is a public service that is in danger of being cut in return for $30 $13 or $6 a week for some people—maybe. 
Then we come to the question of understanding how crucial it is to have a solid public service in for instance our response to the tsunami. The phones went bananas when that tsunami happened. Thank goodness we used the Red Cross out there this time. But I came into the department 2 or 3 days later and found 30 or 40 people working on the books taking down details from the Red Cross to check where New Zealanders were in Thailand Indonesia Malaysia etc. They were doing that as overtime work I suppose one would say but they surely were not getting overtime. That sort of consular work needs to be supported and upheld by a ministry—that is public service. 
Another area in this vote is disarmament. It is mentioned again in the estimates because we have put in funding of $1.2 million sought for contributions to the G8 global partnership. Some of that money is there to make sure we do not have people out there selling nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction such as chemical weapons taking them from places like Russia and redistributing them around the world. 
That is why New Zealand has contributed money for the destruction with the support of the Russian Government of chemical weapons inside the former Soviet Union. That is valid work. It is work about peace. It is work about building and holding a nuclear-free world. That is something we hold to very very strongly—not just in the Labour-Progressive Government but in New Zealand. 
There is no way our nuclear-free status will be gone by lunchtime. That would absolutely fly in the face of a commitment we have made and stood for on the international stage for so long and on which we have been honoured for the work we have done. 
Then I think about multilateralism. One of the reasons why we did not go into Iraq and join the coalition of the willing is that that was the antithesis of multilateralism. That was countries deciding to go in on their own with a few friends. They were a strange variety of friends. They were countries that really wanted to be friends because it would probably be to their financial advantage to be friends. New Zealand did not do that. We have been challenging—and New Zealand citizens have been challenging—Dr Brash to say whether he would now go or whether he would have then have gone the unilateral way rather than the multilateral way of working within the United Nations systems. That is what we are on about and that is what we support and work with. 
The multilateral system though requires an extraordinary amount of hard work and it requires support. As the Minister with responsibility for working with the disability sector will know one of our ambassadors in New York chaired the committee on the disabilities treaty—I cannot think of its exact name—that is being worked on and won us enormous kudos around the world for his ability to listen to and work with disabled members of the international community in looking for a system of human rights. That same ambassador also won us enormous kudos for his work with the small Island States particularly at the conference in Mauritius following straight on from the tsunami. Then of course we have the kudos we get from the work of other ambassadors such as our disarmament ambassador in Geneva who has recently coordinated the New Agenda Coalition and chaired the conference on disarmament. Such people know and believe in multilateralism and New Zealand flags have flown high because of their work. 
Finally I come to NZAID. NZAID a new baby on the block is a semi-autonomous agency. It sits on its own and has worked out where it goes. Right now we have a report out there internationally saying how good it is but asking us to please give them some more money. Well in the estimates we have. We have made an increase of 23.5 percent—an extra $60 million. 
There are numerous examples of the achievements we will be making and working on as we focus on negating poverty in the Pacific. All New Zealanders should be proud of these ministries and the work they do. They should be funded seriously as we have demonstrated we will do and as we as a Government have done.