Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): My worst fear has been realised: following the Hon Willie Jackson being the next speaker after him! What I like to do in the House is write notes down to respond to the previous speaker and I don't have a lot of notes here to actually respond to Willie. The one thing that I'd acknowledge—and I agree with him—is that I want to acknowledge the Hon Tau Henare. I was very proud to serve with him and I acknowledge the work that he did when he was in this Parliament which was considerable.I just want to set the record straight on a couple of things. The first thing is around the Budget and defence. I was very proud to be defence Minister in a National-led Government in the last term in Government and we did a lot of work—by my previous colleagues Gerry Brownlee and Jonathan Coleman—around doing a defence white paper. I myself at the time went around the country. We held public meetings up and down the country seeking the public's input in terms of what they would like to see from our defence forces; whether or not they wanted to see niche capabilities and what they actually wanted to see us deliver in the next decade with our New Zealand Defence Force. Out of that was driven the defence white paper. Out of that was driven our Defence Capability Plan. It was a commitment to $20 billion of spending over the next 15 years and it was a very comprehensive road map for us in terms of upgrading our defence property investment into our personnel—our people—and investment into equipment so they could go out and do their job.I was worried about the commitment that the incoming Government had in terms of continual investment into our defence forces because during that campaign the finance spokesperson Grant Robertson came out when asked where they would make cuts—because at that stage they were being challenged by the Hon Steven Joyce around the fiscal hole which now he's proven to be right about—and said We'll be making cuts in defence." So when you have the incoming finance Minister saying publicly that they were going to look at defence to make cuts that of course rang warning bells for us—and certainly for me specifically because I hold the portfolio. Of course I started pouring enormous amounts of pressure on Ron Mark as the incoming Minister and also Labour as the incoming leader of the Government. So I've been very pleased to see that the Hon Ron Mark has continued to be able to retain the investment. I'm not happy in the reviews that he's undertaken because we do see that as kicking the can down the road and delaying that investment but we're pleased to see that they've maintained the investment.The point that we made when this Budget was released—and it was released as the Wellbeing Budget and the leadership team led by the Prime Minister went all around the world and they told everyone that this was going to be a special wellbeing Budget something that no country had ever done something that had never been seen in the world before. They laid out five priorities—five priorities—that were going to be focused on in this Wellbeing Budget. The five priorities were—the Hon Willie Jackson will know them. I don't know if he wants to tell us but I'll repeat them. They are: taking mental health seriously improving child wellbeing supporting Māori and Pasifika aspirations building a productive nation and transforming the economy.So when the Budget came out—and I think one of the members highlighted the investment into education—we saw that there was a $20 billion - plus investment into defence. That didn't line up with their five priorities in a wellbeing Budget and actually I think that's why they've come under enormous pressure from their own membership because they weren't expecting that. We were happy to see that investment continue to go into defence. In fact we'd been applying pressure to this Government for the last 18 months to ensure that that continued to happen. So I wanted to clear that up that little misconception that for some reason the National Party doesn't support defence. We do and we always will. We're proud of the work that they do; we've got the best defence force in the world. We've just had an announcement about a drawdown in Taji. I personally think that we're making the wrong decision there. If it's aligned with our partners we have no choice; we're not a big enough defence force to be able to stand up an operation ourselves that's sustainable in Iraq in support of the Iraqi Government and the Iraqi people. However history shows that we go in there—we've done a very good job of defeating the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). They've done a very good job of dismantling the caliphates that were in Syria and Iraq. If we leave too soon history shows that a vacuum is formed and it's very quickly filled by groups like ISIS again. I hope that I'm proven wrong but I just feel that a June 2020 time frame is way too ambitious in terms of being able to retain the gains that we've made and the commitment that we've made in the past years led by our outstanding New Zealand Defence Force personnel and our Anzac-type mission that we're running with the Australians in Taji and in Baghdad Iraq. The other thing that I wanted to say just in relation to the defence portfolio is why are they doing a sole source? It's apparent they are looking at the announcement and the questions that were asked in the House to the Minister today. As an incoming National Government we made enormous investment into our Ministry of Defence around procurement because we inherited some very poor decisions that were made under the previous Labour Government in terms of the procurement of equipment. We identified that actually we needed to invest into our capability inside the ministry and we did that. The incoming Minister had an audit done; the audit showed that we've got a world-class procurement system. Why aren't we using it? Why are we going to a sole source? Why aren't we making sure that we maintain a competitive tension inside that process so that as a country as a small nation—where actually every dollar counts—we're getting the best possible deal that we can? Instead of been wedded to—and this was already signalled by the Minister back in 2016 when he was in Opposition that they're going to go for a C130J Hercules when we've got world-leading technology in systems like the Embraer or even the Japanese C-2 aircraft which they've invested heavily into.Now I don't know if they would ever meet the standard or the requirements that we have but we'll never get to find out because we're not going through a proper procurement system. In actual fact it diminishes us in the eyes of the companies and the countries that are trying to work with us because they've already invested quite a bit in terms of bringing aircraft here and engagement with us and a willingness to engage. We've now come out and said "No we're going to go through a sole source process." It's not right. The other thing that I would mention is that we committed a lot of time on this side of the House the Opposition in fighting a capital gains tax and the introduction of a capital gains tax on Kiwis. I think that regardless of what side of the political spectrum you support most Kiwis would accept that a Labour Government comes in and they borrow more they tax more they spend more. The economy generally slows down and I'll give you an example of that: when the global economy last went into recession back in 2008-2009 the Labour Government had already put New Zealand into recession 18 months ahead of everyone else. We're heading down the same track. We keep being reminded about the situation that's happening globally. At the moment we've gone from an economy they inherited with 4-plus percent growth; they've managed to stall it back to 2.5 percent or less in less than 18 months. So they have got us on the same track. So we managed to deal to the capital gains tax but of course we knew what was coming. What's come? We've got the fuel excise tax times three we've got the regional fuel tax we got GST on online goods we've got brightline extension we've got ring-fencing of losses we've got GST on mobile roaming we've got WorkSafe levies we've got a tourist tax. When we came into urgency—and of course we sat through the weekend; that's fine it was a long weekend—most Kiwis weren't the slightest bit interested in what was happening in Parliament. They were more interested in getting away with their families and enjoying the long weekend. Meanwhile the Government was busily beavering away here passing bills through urgency so that when people woke up the next morning they were going to be taxed more. They were going to have more money taken out of their back pockets. That's the reality of it.One last point on justice—unfortunately I'm running out of time. We haven't seen any major investment in the justice portfolio; we haven't seen any reforms come to this House. We were told by the incoming Government—there were some very big bold speeches and statements made—that this was going to be the biggest reformist Government in a generation in relation to our criminal justice system. We had the massive summit with huge cost blowouts that they ran. We've just had a report that's come back from the advisory group. I want to acknowledge the advisory group; there are some very good people on there that I admire a lot and they've come and they've met with us and they've taken the time with our caucus. I have to say though the report doesn't tell us anything that we didn't already know. These are issues that as a country we've been dealing with for decades and will continue to be a big challenge for us. We just have to get stuck in and come up with solutions. I'm pleased that on this side of the House we've got some real solutions. We're doing some heavy lifting around our policy work that we'll bring to the country next year for the election in 2020. But sadly we didn't see any reforms we didn't see any investment we haven't seen any changes. In fact the only policies that have been held on to and that haven't been given additional investment were the ones that the National Party brought in our last term of Government. A very disappointing Budget by a Government that's not delivering on its promises."