Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. It's a pleasure for me to take what's going to be a relatively short call because we want to see the bill pass today. Can I acknowledge the Minister the Hon David Parker because I've been having trade discussions with the Hon David Parker for the last six years and we didn't always agree with the passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership but it was very pleasing to see that in coming into Government all the work that had been done by the Hon Todd McClay and before him the Hon Tim Groser was carried on and we now have a very good free-trade agreement.I know that my colleague Paul Goldsmith made a valiant effort to try and get the Green Party at the last minute to reconsider their position on this. I think I agree with him: it's unlikely to happen. But the only observation I'll make in relation to free-trade agreements because all of the countries that have signed this in the Pacific—we're all small trading nations and actually without good comprehensive well-written free-trade agreements we wouldn't be doing very well. We're not big enough to trade amongst ourselves so trading with the rest of the world is actually very important.In the six years that I've been involved in this Parliament I've not had one constituent I've not had one business I've not had one person come up to me and say I hate these free-trade agreements that we've got. They're really bad for us. They're not creating any opportunities." It's normally quite the opposite—that we see opportunities we see new export growth. The great thing about the PACER-Plus is that it's with our South Pacific cousins who we are heavily invested in—all of us have got a mutual investment in the success and our futures together. On that note I just want to acknowledge the other countries that have signed up to this agreement: Australia the Cook Islands Kiribati Nauru Niue Samoa the Solomon Islands Tonga Tuvalu and Vanuatu.I want to come back to the Solomon Islands. I mean I'm really pleased to see the Solomon Islands there because I was lucky enough to go out there and be an observer for their general elections. Of course they've come through a difficult part of their history with the tensions and then having the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) and the RAMSI draw-down. There's quite a bit of energy and excitement there in terms of trying to get their economy going and it's a complicated one because they're made up of a whole lot—hundreds—of islands. But when I was there there was the microeconomics going on. There were people that were just making good products and they wanted to find markets to sell them in—local markets. But now with an agreement like PACER-Plus I hope that we'll start to see some of those products imported and appear in our stores in New Zealand.Trade is incredibly important and I'm very proud of the fact that—there's three things actually that this Parliament should always work together to try to have bipartisan agreement on. These are my own personal beliefs. One is national security. We should always be working across parties to try and do the best in terms of our own national security. The other one is defence policy. We should try to have as much agreement on defence policy as we can across the House. I acknowledge the Minister of Defence in the House now. The third one is trade. Fundamentally getting good trade agreements is critically important. I think the country has got an expectation that we as parliamentarians will come here with a view to working and delivering the best possible trade agreements that we can for our nation. That's why it's nice to be able to acknowledge not only the Hon David Parker but also the Hon Todd McClay who have worked very hard as our respective trade Ministers with our Pacific Island partners in putting together what's a very good trade agreement in the Tariff (PACER Plus) Amendment Bill. I'm very happy to recommend this bill to the House. Thank you."