Mitchell Mark: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMitchell Mark: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 28 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:2961. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney):I would just like to open by saying that I would challenge the Labour Party and the members opposite—the next caller—to get up and instead of what we continue to hear tonight which is negativity and attack actually articulate what the plan is.Hon Ruth Dyson: What are you hearing? Tired old Government—out of touch and arrogant?MARK MITCHELL: The Hon Ruth Dyson just played right into the point that I wanted to make which is the fact that when we come to this Chamber we should come here with aspiration. We should be talking with aspiration and we should have aspiration for our country and for our nation. This is the type of language that I hear throughout the night from the Labour Party from the Opposition benches: “tired” “left behind” “arrogant” and “failure”. I hear it time and time again. That is not the language of aspiration. That is not the type of language actually that this country needs.I want to come back to something that my colleague the Hon Paul Goldsmith said the point that he made earlier tonight and that is the fact that he said that when we went into the global financial crisis and we went into it in a world recession what we really needed was strong leadership. We needed leadership that knew what had to be done to get us through that and to protect and help those who were most vulnerable. I am very proud of this Government and what it has achieved.But to achieve stability it actually helps if you have one leader and I am very proud of the fact that we have had one of the best world leaders that any country could have asked for through a global financial crisis and through a world recession—that is the Rt Hon John Key. If we look across at Labour if we look across at the Opposition benches look at the leadership that they have provided over the last 6 years. Let us look at the churn rate. We have had the Hon Phil Goff—gone. We then had David Shearer come in. David Shearer whom I have worked with on the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee is a quality man who has got a very good track record and a proud record. What happened to him? What did you do to him? Gone.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Come back on to the debate.MARK MITCHELL: Cunliffe and Little that is right a constant churn—but you are right Mr Chairperson. I will come back to the bill.I want to speak about the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. I want to acknowledge all the staff and all our people who are employed around the world and working in New Zealand’s interests. I especially want to comment and thank and acknowledge the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade staff who have been dealing with the recent tragedy and earthquake in Nepal. I spoke with a father who has a 19-year-old son over there at the moment and he said that they have been nothing but fantastic. The communication has been very good. They have located him. They have reassured him that he is OK and that he is safe. That seems to be a constant theme in terms of what they are doing and how they are performing. I want to acknowledge them.I want to acknowledge Minister McCully again and the team at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the likes of David Shearer who work very hard for a huge achievement for us in terms of credibility and presence on the world stage and for being successful with achieving a seat on the United Nations Security Council.I want to acknowledge the people who work in the trade sector along with our Minister and the free-trade agreements that have been very very successfully negotiated over the term of this Government. We are a small country. We are a small trading nation down the bottom of the world. The future of our country relies heavily on how well we continue to trade with the rest of the world. That is why these free-trade agreements are so critically important to us. I do want to acknowledge Phil Goff and the Labour Party for the work that they did on the free-trade agreement with China and the way that we picked that up when we came into Government. It has been very successful and it continues to be very successful for the GDP growth of our country.I want to just quickly refer back to something that the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance highlighted. I think it is something really worth noting. That is the fact that even though the milk powder price has dropped off—and unfortunately that is something that we cannot control—our GDP is still very strong and continues to grow. What that would show is that there actually is a lot more diversity in our economy than we realise. I just wanted to acknowledge that point also.I just wanted to very quickly touch on the deployment to Iraq. I know that that is close to all our hearts as our servicemen and servicewomen from the Defence Force arrive in Iraq.