Brownlee GerryHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): Much of what I might say has already been said by speakers this afternoon as we are engaged in a contribution on the topic of disarmament which does have broad bipartisan support. I do want to acknowledge the reaching out to all parties of the Parliament by the Hon Phil Goff—sorry my goodness; I just put a tweet out about Phil Goff; a good one by the way—by the Hon Phil Twyford. I think the idea that New Zealand has a single position on these matters internationally as he has just said is extremely important. The way in which the material was made available to other parties ahead of the delegation's going to New York will have I think assisted our officials there to represent us extremely well. And I'm pleased to hear those reports here this afternoon.A person never likes to age themselves in politics; it's a dangerous sort of thing. Perhaps I did with that little senior moment before confusing this gentleman over here with another one who is about to represent us overseas. But I do actually remember family members engaging in fairly interesting discussions at the time of the Bay of Pigs and for some time after that—quite a time. It's almost like that crisis moment blended into the very significant extent of testing in the Pacific particularly by France in the 1960s rolling on into the 1970s. There was a lot of discussion about what would happen to people what the long-term consequences were going to be and the French position always was Well actually don't worry about it. There's nothing there. It's all fine."But I do also have the vivid memory of a French Minister going to I think Mururoa and being asked to take a swim in the lagoon. There was much sort of I suppose you would say hurrah about the fact that he was all ready to get into the water and then at the last moment managed to change his mind perhaps because the wind was a bit cold or something else but generally I would suspect knowing that there was perhaps some potential for him to become somewhat damaged by undertaking that particular swim. I also recall at the time there was a New Zealand diplomat who was confronted with this suggestion from the French that there was nothing wrong with what they'd done in the Pacific there was no problem with it it wasn't going to hurt anybody and his response simply was "Well if that's the case why not test in France?" So we all know that that was a wrong position.Whatever might come of the discussions about the fallout from those tests it's still being experienced in the Pacific. We shouldn't let that get in the road of pushing for the disarmament that is so much needed. There will be few people in the world now with the positioning that Russia has taken over the last few months who would I think disagree that we need to do something to get away from that particular threat and the extraordinary damage that can be caused by those particular weapons. The danger I think won't be countries that are essentially the long-term holders of nuclear weapons: France the United Kingdom the United States Russia and China. I think it will be the rogue States that present a problem for us; those rogue States being Iran particularly where no one quite knows what's going on with their programme—with North Korea where obviously the testing of the ballistic missiles that would be the vessels for carrying nuclear weapons is continuing with that sort of veiled threat that "Actually we've got the bomb back here and we could use it any time we like." And then also I think an emerging threat that's sort of becoming clearer as we see the dare I say the word development of the Russia-Ukraine conflict is the possibility of those weapons falling into private hands—private armies like the Wagner Group or some other such. That is I think a big concern that we should be equally worried about.So this is a good discussion in the House today. It's good to tell New Zealand and the world that we are bipartisan across all parties in this House in pursuing disarmament."