Davidson Marama; Collins JudithHon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): I promise I'll keep that vibe going. Mr Speaker thank you very much. Aotearoa has a proud and long custom and history of being a voice for peace and humanitarian concentration and efforts across world conflicts. We the Greens consider that we need our actions to continue to be focused on de-escalation of violence instead of supporting further fuelling of conflict where it is ordinary people who will be most affected. This Government's denial—which will lead to some of our questions that I have—that this conflict in Yemen is connected to the war in Gaza is naive and dangerous—at best wilfully ignorant—because we have seen quite clearly across the world that the Houthi have stated that their attacks on shipping are in response to Israel's bombardment of Gaza and will only stop when a ceasefire is reached. This Government is getting drawn into a situation with complex interests from a range of parties without sufficient consideration and without a public mandate. Most importantly this threatens the longstanding and robust agenda of an independent foreign policy approach rather than hooking our trailers up to States and nations of the world who are furthering and risking escalation of violence.The decision to send the New Zealand Defence Force personnel to the Red Sea has already been agreed by many different global international relations experts here and around the world—that it has every chance of escalating violence. Now that is not even up for debate. That seems to be something that people both in support of deployment and people against deployment are at least agreed on that particular notion that there is more than a 50 percent chance that violence and conflict will escalate.So I am putting to the Minister of Defence: why is our country wanting to be involved in escalating further violence when our country needs to remain and actually protect our long held independence and our long held values and tradition of focusing our efforts on peacekeeping and enduring justice?This is now going to one of the statements I have been referring to—I have been referring to this Minister's statements the whole time but one particular one that I do want to pick up is: the Minister said just now that collective action demonstrates our commitment to support efforts to address a serious threat to international stability." and to uphold legality. Is there nothing quite as threatening to stability and legality as the ongoing violence and genocide that is happening to Gaza where we have actually withheld our discretion to make massive mandate deployment decisions so far and have not sought to use everything possible to call for a ceasefire? And yet for this for these attacks on the shipping from Yemen in the Red Sea we are then using discretion. How does the Minister decide when to be concerned about threats to security and stability and when to be concerned about legality? Where does she cherry-pick and choose to not be concerned about threats to stability? My first question there.Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Defence): Well I think I found a question in there. I think the point really the member needs to remember is that decisions are made on the best interests of New Zealand and New Zealanders and every New Zealander who is going to be finding that the costs of this extra 10 to 15 days' sailing and the extra insurances being paid for and demanded to be able to have any shipping coming through is going to be paid for by New Zealanders. So we also look to the legality; we look to principles that we have around making sure that New Zealand does what we can to be able to help ensure that New Zealanders are better off than we would be if we didn't.I'd also remind the member that New Zealand has been involved in matters around the Red Sea since 2013. It's been going on for quite a long time and no matter what the Houthis may say is their reason for doing what they're doing there are 50 other nations that are affected by this. And she's also asked some statements somewhere in there around independent foreign policy. Well I suggest to her that she looks at that compared to her statements about how global commentators should be obviously influencing our foreign policy. Of course New Zealand has an independent foreign policy. By the way so does every other State and territory that I'm aware of. We are one of many countries with an independent foreign policy and I don't note that it's going to be set by commentators who like to comment from the sidelines and are not prepared to actually pull their weight when it comes to being a global citizen.Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): What is the Minister's end game? Does she believe that this deployment into the Red Sea is what is going to find enduring peace in the Middle East? Does the Minister believe that our association with the US and the UK—who are already seen to be meddling right around the world—will de-escalate violence and does she believe that escalating violence is truly in the best interest of New Zealanders?Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Defence): I'm very happy to tell the member that I absolutely support the New Zealand Defence Force in what they're doing. This is the right decision. New Zealand is not a freeloader. New Zealand is not going to—and the member may wish to as she has today—express support for the Houthis. I do not and nor does this Government. We do not support piracy; we do support New Zealanders' freedom of navigation being good citizens of the world and we're very proud of the people who are doing that.Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): Does the Minister support calls to end genocide and have a ceasefire and end further harm and on that then where was the public debate? If the Minister feels truly and confident that she has New Zealanders' best interests at heart where was the big debate?Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Defence): Look I don't think any of that has anything to do with the statement that I've made today. But I would say to that member that we all love world peace; we'd just like to see a bit more of it."