Mitchell Mark: Address in ReplyText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMitchell Mark: Address in Reply[Sitting date: 29 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:388. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney):Congratulations to you Mr Deputy Speaker on your new role as Deputy Speaker. I just want to acknowledge also my electorate chair Jennie Georgetti and my campaign chair Roger Burrill.Hon Simon Bridges: Salt of the earth people.MARK MITCHELL: They are. I want to acknowledge our people in Rodney who turned out and participated in our democracy this year regardless of what candidate or party they supported. At least they turned out and they used their vote. I also want to acknowledge our outgoing police area commander Scott Webb who has just been promoted and has taken up the area commander’s role in west Auckland. I want to acknowledge him and the great work that he has done in building relationships amongst our community groups and iwi. The police now take a much greater role in this type of relationship-building in working through the community and he has done a very good job of that. I want to acknowledge the incoming area commander Inspector Mark Fergus who is a very good local surf lifesaver and I am sure that he is also going to make a very good police area commander.I want to acknowledge our volunteer firefighters. I was at their awards ceremony last week. I especially want to mention two of our officers Bevan Shaw and Keith Mackereth who received their 25-year gold star for service. I speak especially in relation to Keith because his father Frank Mackereth is our chief fire officer and his brother Vaughn is the assistant chief fire officer down in Takapuna for Waitematā. Between the three of them—Frank and his two sons—they have a combined service to our volunteer fire service of 112¾ years. That is a pretty incredible milestone.I want to acknowledge our new colleagues who have joined us this year all 14 of them. I think there are three of them in the House—Todd Barclay Parmjeet Parmar and Nuk Korako. Actually just looking at Todd Parmjeet and Nuk it just goes to show you the variety and the depth that the National caucus has. I think we are doing a very good job as a party in rejuvenating without a doubt.I want to acknowledge the important projects for me this year in my own electorate. The Pūhoi to Wellsford motorway project was a very important one. I notice I am sharing a split call today with my colleague Mike Sabin. I want to acknowledge him because I know that we have both worked very hard to make sure we remain focused on delivering the Pūhoi to Wellsford project and I am very proud that our Government the Prime Minister and our executive have continued to have a focus and a commitment to that investment. It is going to be a significant investment for Rodney.The next big infrastructure project for me is Penlink which is further south in the electorate. It is no less important and we are experiencing some pretty significant growth. We are expected to absorb a lot of the growth in the future. In Auckland at the moment I think that about 33 percent of the residential consents are lodged with council for the southern part of my electorate—Silverdale Ōrewa and Whangaparāoa.I am very thankful to be a member of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee this year and I want to acknowledge David Shearer Phil Goff Fletcher Tabuteau and Kennedy Graham and my own colleagues who are going to be sitting on that committee. I anticipate that we are going to have some interesting work to do this term. I want to acknowledge some comments that Mr Shearer made and I acknowledge his background because we all know that he has got a lot of experience and he is very highly regarded and respected in terms of delivering humanitarian aid and assistance around the world especially in hotspots like Iraq Somalia and others. He said in his speech tonight in reference to the situation with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria that it is a very complicated situation. I entirely agree with him.The point that I want to make—and I am conscious that I have got a split call; I have not got much time—is that as a country we watched Lucy Knight. Lucy Knight was the 43-year-old mother in Northcote who saw an elderly lady being attacked by an offender who was attempting to take her bag off her. Lucy did not just stand by and do nothing. She did not put her head down and walk away and say “That’s none of my business.” She intervened. She tried to help. As a result she was injured an injury that she is now recovering from. I think as a nation we are going to have to ask ourselves whether we want to be a country of people who put their heads down and ignore what is happening in the rest of the world. Our future is critically aligned with our being able to trade and we do trade with the rest of the world. I think that when there are problems as a country we should be focused on looking at what we can do and what contribution we can make. Thank you very much and I will hand over to my colleague. Thank you.