Brownlee Gerry; Salesa JennyHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): Can I just start by saying that notwithstanding the somewhat ill-informed speech prepared by I suspect Labour Party researchers and delivered by the last speaker on the first reading Vanushi Walters—albeit tinged with a degree of unnecessary nastiness the National Party will continue to support this bill because foremost in our minds is the suffering of the Ukraine people. The fact too is that this was an unprovoked attack. About the various comments that were made by the speaker I just referred to about the long history that has existed on that Ukraine-Russia border there can be no justification at all for the whole-scale devastation that Vladimir Putin has decided to unleash on the Ukrainian people. It is despicable. And in that regard can I say the Minister's comment that it's important to take the people of New Zealand along if there is to be a more general sanctions bill before the House at some point very soon—I would agree with that but we shouldn't be under any illusion about the effect that this conflict in the Ukraine is going to have on the New Zealand economy regardless of any sanction that we may or may not participate in. It seems to me that the simple point here is the principle of saying that we stand up for countries that are free and democratic. We stand up for countries that embrace the sort of values that have made New Zealand one of the longest democracies of all countries in the world despite our relatively brief post-1840 history. So I think that New Zealanders will when they see—through whatever their source of information is these days—that devastation that human waste that horrible sort of circumstance arising and will be quite happy to say Yep we're doing our bit." Some may even want to say "Let's do more." As for the claim by the Government that everything is worked at speed well I accept that when there's been an intransigent position for not just the last short while but for quite a long period of time it takes a significant amount of time to re-change a position. But I don't think anyone should listen too much to the idea that New Zealand was fast out of the blocks with for example its travel ban on Russians associated with the Putin regime coming to New Zealand. The reality is that most of New Zealand has been on a complete travel ban for most of the last two years so there's nothing particularly flash about that. As for the export ban well we all know that it was Fonterra who actually got out ahead of the Government and decided that they would no longer export to Russia. If anyone has a look at the two-way trade between our countries Fonterra is very much the dominant player and I congratulate them for that courageous decision. It might only be a relatively small part of their income as a cooperative but none the less it's income they have to make up somewhere else. Then there was the talk about "Well we stopped diplomatic discussions stopped the connections between our people in Russia and the Russian authorities and our authorities in New Zealand and the Russian Embassy." That simply begs the question "Why are those diplomats still here? Why are the Russian diplomats still in Wellington?" Because the argument that says "Well you can't punish the people of Russia because they're just victims of the Putin regime." may hold some water but in the end the Russian regime speak acts and does on behalf of the people of the country and if you look at the diplomats that are here those people are direct servants of Vladimir Putin and his regime. For them to make any statement outside of total commitment to the actions that are currently being taken in the Ukraine is unthinkable. And so they should not be here. They should have been asked to remove themselves. We removed for goodness sake the Fijian representation in New Zealand when Frank Bainimarama took over the elected Government there. That didn't seem to be a problem and I think of the retaliation again when the Israelis removed their ambassador some time ago. These things happen but they are statements and it is odd that the Russian ambassador continues to sit here in Wellington clearly very very supportive of what Vladimir Putin's regime is doing in the Ukraine and yet doesn't himself appear on any of the sanctions lists that we've seen so far. When it comes to those lists there is a question that we will tease out a bit further in the committee stage. One of the questions that's coming—and I'll signal it for the Minister now—is why does our travel ban list not mirror that of the UK the United States and Australia? It doesn't. There is a glaring omission there and there needs to be some explanation for that. There was another comment that the Minister made that concerned me a little bit. She said that part of the consideration that's led to this bill coming into the House today was the vote by 141 countries including New Zealand to condemn Russia through the General Assembly vote at the United Nations. Well what does that say? It actually says that well having recognised that the multilateral system is creaking because of the situation with the Security Council with the irony of Russia being in the chair of that Security Council and then exercising a veto to make sure that no sanctions are approved in that body against Mother Russia it is now the body—that's the United Nations—that we still turn to to get some sort of validity for the bringing of this bill to the House. That concerns me. I think the idea should be that we have truly an independent foreign policy—and we can agree with those international forums. We; we don't have to withdraw from them we don't have to rail against them but we should have that provision available to us so that on behalf of the people of New Zealand a statement can be made about this sort of aggressive action. I understand that clause 8 in that regard is going to be another area that will be discussed in the select committee. But I will suggest that those who are promoting it have a good read of clause 8 as it's written in the bill. It would seem to me that there is adequate provision there to guide the Minister in making recommendations ultimately to the Government. So we come to this bill having promoted the concept of autonomous sanctions for a long time through a time when there was not a will in the House to get it passed and where there was a desire on the part of our party to have it. Clearly that was not shared by enough to make up a Government majority—a simple fact. Hon Andrew Little: Could have done it. Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: The Minister over there the Hon Andrew Little might be shaking his head and grumbling but the Labour Party have never supported the concept of autonomous sanctions until this point. Until this point—Hon Andrew Little: That member's party was in Government; it didn't do it. Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Well look the member over there speaks through his mask. Unfortunately he's very muffled so Hansard won't pick up the particular irrelevance that he's trying to burble away with. But it is a fact that this bill could have been passed some time earlier. It's not something we are particularly going to dwell on because we have in front of us tonight the opportunity to pass a bill that will be very very useful in stating New Zealand's commitment to the international rule of law to the sort of style of Government and the freedom of peoples that we like to see further expanded around the world. With those comments can I say that the National Party look forward to the next stage of the bill where the Minister will perhaps be able to answer one or two more specific questions about some of the drafting of the bill. It certainly won't be a time to question the intent of the bill which we very strongly support. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that the motion be agreed to."