Mitchell MarkMARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): I was just wondering whether I might share my own context around how this whole situation has arisen.Carmel Sepuloni: Only if it's relevant.MARK MITCHELL: Well I think it is relevant. If I go back to April 2010 at that time I had been living in the Middle East with my family for a fairly long time. I was still very involved in trying to grow my own business up there and I was lucky enough to be asked to assist with a trade delegation that was coming up to the Middle East. It was led by our Prime Minister and also had our Minister of Trade Tim Groser on it. Of course everyone will remember that shortly after arriving in the Middle East we had a tragedy back home. On Anzac Day one of our Iroquois went down and we lost three of our servicemen. The Prime Minister of course did absolutely the right thing: he decided to come home to do what he could to support the families and be here with the nation over what was a very difficult time.Our trade Minister stayed out there and carried on with the delegation. I was lucky enough to get some time with him along with some other business people—Kiwis who had been up in the Middle East for a long time—and we raised with him and talked with him about the issue around the free-trade agreement. He was very open with us about the fact that there was a real challenge to face and that was around this issue with live sheep shipments and the perception that an agreement had been broken and that that lay with Saudi Arabia—which of course is extremely influential and has a leadership role within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).I just want to address at this point the point that Mr Shearer made around the fact that the Government is trying to blame the Labour Party which was in Government at the time that the agreement was made. I do not know the context and I do not know the details around why that agreement was made. I am certainly not pointing the finger at you. I do not want to see five or six thousand of our Kiwi sheep lost while being moved in an ocean shipment. If that was the right decision to make I fully support it. I think that was the right thing to do. However the perception that created for the other partner—the Saudi partner—was that we broke the deal. In my world when I was in business the minute that you broke a deal for whatever reason—even if it was the right thing to do—you immediately took on legal risk. I think the point around whether there was genuine legal risk in relation to this deal gone wrong—absolutely there was. Whether a party was going to trigger that and take it into court we do not know—that is crystal ball stuff. The Minister was very right when he had a look at the situation and clearly identified that as a country we were carrying legal risk. That cannot be debated.In terms of economic opportunity I can tell you now as someone who was lucky enough to spend a fair bit of my adult life in the Middle East building a business that the GCC is very good to do business with. We have lots of services and products we can offer up there. We have a large Kiwi community living throughout the GCC and there will continue to be real opportunities for us especially around this agri-hub and agribusiness. Is there economic opportunity up there and was it at risk? Without a doubt. In terms of diplomatic risk of course there was diplomatic risk. I remember when New Zealand was blocked in getting apples into Australia. The Government got alongside our apple producers—it was the right thing to do. We needed to try to open that market up and that is exactly what we did as a Government. Make no mistake the Saudi Government would have taken exactly the same position with one of its own citizens if it felt that a deal had been broken. We were carrying significant diplomatic risk.When I spoke to Tim Groser in April of 2010 he was quite right in saying that this was complicated but that they were going to be throwing themselves and their resources—we have got very good trade negotiators and we have got a very strong Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and they had been working to try to find a solution—to allow us to unlock the negotiations around a free-trade agreement. And that is exactly what they did.I would just like to highlight and support the Minister's comments around reading the report. It is important now that the report is out that people get it and read it. They can come to their own conclusions on it but there are a couple of points that I do want to make that I think come to the heart of it. On page 48—bearing in mind that we have not had a lot of time to read the report—Was there corruption or bribery?". There are four points that the report goes through here—it is very detailed. It is a very good report and I support the Minister's comments around it. I am not challenging anything in here; he is not going to challenge anything in here. The whole purpose of the report is—they have spent a lot of time they have gone into a lot of detail and I think they have done a very very good job of it. But basically the report says: "Therefore we do not consider that an offence of bribery could be established. We found no evidence or reason to refer the matter on to an appropriate agency to carry out a criminal investigation into corruption and bribery." They could not be more clear about what they are trying to say in the report. "Was there a facilitation payment?" This is another accusation that has been levelled at the Minister for months and months. "Was there a facilitation payment? We were also asked whether there were any facilitation payments. The Ministry of Justice has explained a 'facilitation' or 'grease' payment as a small payment made to a foreign or public official to speed up a service to which the payer is already entitled." They found that there were no facilitation payments. They are very clear about that. There were no facilitation payments. I do not know how much clearer they could be.If I move forward: "How was the money spent?". Of course this is truncated but—"How was the money spent? The Ministry made a $4 million payment to HAATT Est on 21 February 2013. The rest of this Part covers the spending of the remaining $7.5 million allocated to the Partnership. We have reviewed NZTE's spending from the time the funds were transferred from the Ministry and found that the spending was made with appropriate financial authorities in place." The report is very clear that actually the right financial authorities and the right financial processes were in place. There were no facilitation payments.If I move on I actually come to the point that the Minister opened with. This comes to the heart of the report: "We found no evidence of corruption bribery or a facilitation payment. The arrangements entered into were a lawful use of public resources and public money was spent with appropriate financial authorities in place." You cannot be any clearer in the report. The Minister has stated clearly that some things could have been done better right? I guess that just about all of us claim at some point in our lives that we could have done something a bit better but actually there is a big gap between doing something better and actually doing something illegally. I am very happy to stand up in the House today and support the Minister of Foreign Affairs and say that he the Speaker of the House the Rt Hon David Carter and the Hon Tim Groser along with their officials have actually done a very good job at finding a way to be able to unlock the ability for us to enter into strong negotiations around a free-trade agreement. The Hon Todd McClay is progressing that very well up here. I can tell you now from my own context up there and from my own networks up there—I have invested heavily not only financially but also in friendships and networks—that they feel this thing is moving very very positively in the right direction.If I can just finish up by saying that there are real opportunities that exist up in the GCC. Someone mentioned food security. Food security is very important and is something that we take for granted down here. I would be the first one to say that when those sheep arrived and threw their lambing up in the Middle East for whatever reason something went wrong. I did not like it either. I did not like the losses that were faced. There are all sorts of reasons behind that. Climate is the obvious one and that there was no ability to transition the sheep properly. I do not know—I am not in on the details—I am just guessing. But I would say that the GCC countries are making big investments into being able to provide protein for their growing populations and actually New Zealand has got a huge opportunity there to be at the forefront of technology and innovation and to be able to assist them with the issues that they face with food security. Thank you very much.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed."