Hayes John: Debate On Pacific IssuesText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHayes John: Debate On Pacific Issues[Sitting date: 18 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9563. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa): I know that Pacific people will judge people by their actions not their talk. Some years ago I was standing close to a chain mesh fence at about 10000 feet in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. The fence separated people on the outside who had lived as hunters gatherers and gardeners for more than 5000 years on that spot. Inside the fence there were fly-in fly-out foreigners developing the Porgera Gold Mine a mine that cost $300 million to develop and in the first 12 months had generated $380 million of income. On one side of the fence were men local men clad in bilums and “arse grass”. Miners inside the fence were keeping the peace posting 2 kina notes through the holes in the chain mesh. A miner who had been murdered a week before had caught it on the wrong side of the fence. I overheard the villagers asking the miners who had given them permission to sit on their land. “The Government in Port Moresby.” a miner replied. “Wanem disella Govmen e stap long Moresby?”—“What is this Government in Port Moresby?” That was quite a fair question in a very remote part of Papua New Guinea without schools health centres electricity and in fact no sign of any Government at all. I could easily understand why the villagers in this remote setting had no concept of what Papua New Guinea’s Parliament was at that time. I am sure things have changed.In Honiara at 2 o’clock in the morning I was involved in extracting a former student of Victoria University Prime Minister Bart Ulufa’alu from his office in Parliament where he was being held by Malaitans wanting to overthrow his Government. We nervously drove him to the house of an expatriate priest for safe keeping so that at least he could get a decent night’s sleep and a shower. I was astonished a couple of days later in a meeting with the overthrowers to be given a faxed letter from the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association commending the actions of the MPs involved in the situation. That was the beginning of the conflict that saw the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) intervention consuming millions of dollars that might otherwise have been used for core services which those who elected politicians expected Parliament to provide.The underlying dispute between the people of Malaita and Guadalcanal is land. It continues to simmer. Solomon Islanders picking apples in my village of Greytown tell me that the conflict will erupt again as soon as RAMSI departs and that will not help anybody. Land ownership was central to the problem on Bougainville. It took 10 years to resolve but it took us 8 years to learn that we needed to stop trying to take responsibility for others’ problems and to instead support communities to take responsibility for resolving their own disputes. Although rarely acknowledged Māoriprocess was critical to the resolution of the issue between Papua New Guinea and Bougainville. That took place mainly on Matakana Island. The people of the Solomon Islands may yet find those lessons learnt in Bougainville to be useful.Cohesion across the Pacific Islands Forum members has loosened since leaders around that time of decolonisation—the great tōtara trees Ratu Mara Albert Henry Michael Somare Robert Rex Bob Hawke and Hammer DeRoburt—worked together to unite the region. Since their time we have perhaps unwittingly devolved leaderships to public servants. I think of last year’s Forum Economic Ministers’ Meeting which I went to. There were about 10 Ministers there with at least 70 officials in attendance. The officials spent 2 days before we arrived and the whole time we were there meeting and constructing an 84-paragraph communiqué which no one has read since. That is not leadership. I hope that any record of this meeting will be no longer than two sides of one A4 page.Time pressures and fast planes have reduced the time that leaders spend together reducing their engagement with each other. We do not know each other as well as we used to. This meeting is trying to help overcome this sort of problem with the next generation of leaders sitting in our gallery. This meeting I hope will help us to get to know each other much better because it is much easier to work with people you know and understand.Recent months have seen the emergence of new entities like the Melanesian spearhead group based in Vanuatu the Micronesian leaders’ forum based in Guam and the beginning of a Polynesian leaders’ group coalescing around Samoa. Participants from 22 countries were invited to this forum. Never before has this Parliament House seen the sort of group we have in it today. Never in the history of our region have so many politicians and leaders gathered under one roof in the Pacific to meet share ideas and get to know one another. My committee the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee hopes that this gathering will rejuvenate our ability to work together as brothers and sisters bound together by our great Pacific Ocean. We hope that working more closely together will help our region to work more collaboratively for the betterment of those we represent. The ocean that touches all of your shores encircles our country too. Irrespective of our language or our culture we are all Pacific people in this House today. The future well-being of your community is tied to mine. We are joined together like a plaited rope.Meetings like this do not happen by accident and a huge number of people have worked for this outcome. My one-time boss and hugely supportive friend Mike Moore championed the idea of a Pacific leadership congress in his bookA Pacific Parliament. We would not be gathered here without the support of Prime Minister Key. I bring greetings from our Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully and I want to thank him because it was his involvement and support that provided the help for us to be here today. He has asked me to convey his greetings to you from Africa where he is on a 2-week assignment lobbying hard for New Zealand’s bid for the seat on the United Nations Security Council. I have to say to the House that we actually had one hell of an argument before he took off because he really wanted to be here but we could not slot this meeting in between the energy conference and other things going on in the region. So in the finish he lost and I am grateful to him for doing that.I want to thank David Carter our Speaker; Mary Harris Clerk of the Parliament; and Lesley Ferguson and her team for the huge support. And thank you to each one of our parliamentary colleagues for the support you have extended. Of course none of us would be here without my girls: Emily Taylforth and Morag Santini. They have worked huge hours. They are just magnificent.It is New Zealand’s responsibility to work collaboratively with each of you as neighbours and friends. Understanding each other and working together is essential to the growth and development of the communities we represent. Any instability in our neighbourhood has consequences for us all. Stable and affordable governance is an essential precondition for economic growth. New Zealand is smaller than Sydney and Sydney does not maintain an army a navy an air force and 50 diplomatic officers offshore. We all struggle to maintain an affordable Government. The bigger it is the more constraints there are on those who are in our business sector creating jobs. Keeping bureaucracy at a size our communities can afford is critical to sustainable growth and creating jobs for our young people. Our geography dictates a high level of interdependence logistically and economically in this region.Finally I would like to welcome especially our friends from the North-west Pacific—Guam Palau the Marshalls American Samoa the Marianas and the Federated States of Micronesia. Pacific people contribute to New Zealand at every level—in our universities in our Parliament in our factories and in our Government departments. We are a South Pacific nation. This is deep in our DNA. New Zealand politicians no longer visit the Pacific only on the way to London. Our strategic ambitions are transparent. We want to see the island countries of the North-west Pacific integrated into the institutions of the South Pacific because it makes sense and because it makes us stronger. That is why our Minister of Foreign Affairs made great efforts to encourage you all to participate in the Pacific Islands Forum the premier political meeting in our region. That is why our Minister has visited the Marshall Islands which will host the next forum.We have common problems. We can therefore have common solutions. This is what this historic assembly is about. Thank you.