Hutchison Paul: Debate On Pacific IssuesText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHutchison Paul: Debate On Pacific Issues[Sitting date: 18 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9582. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua): I warmly greet and salute our visitors from around the Pacific. Thank you very much for coming this way. You show great stamina here this afternoon. The genesis of today’s debate has come from a variety of individuals and from the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee inquiry into New Zealand’s relationship with the South Pacific. May I acknowledge the drive that John Hayes chair of that select committee has put in to make this event possible. In the most admirable way he can accurately be accused of borderline belligerence bullying badgering and bulldozing the select committee members and a few others. However he deserves our heartfelt thanks.As a fifth-generation New Zealander of Scottish Irish and English descent I can speak only as a relative newcomer to this region since about 1831. But like many New Zealand families we have intermarried and are proudly multicultural. My brother’s wife Kuinimeri Aiono Ma’ia’i from Samoa has always claimed that the Garden of Eden was close to Apia and that the rest of us have a great deal to be thankful for. Kuinimeri’s brother Dr Semisi Ma’ia’i not only is a fine and distinguished physician but also wrote the first New Zealand - Samoan dictionary an extraordinary piece of scholarship and hugely important for our mutual understanding.Like many other Kiwis I have had the chance to explore holiday live and work in the wider Pacific. As a young medical student I had the adventure of my life in Papua New Guinea prior to its independence in 1968 where we set off to go crocodile hunting but due to several hiccups in the planning I ended up carrying out immunisation patrols in the central Papuan mountains along the Kokoda Trail—the very track on which thousands of young Americans and Australians lost their lives to prevent invasion by the Japanese beyond Port Moresby and on to Australia and New Zealand. If they had not been successful the whole Pacific might be very different today. It has been indelibly imprinted on me how hard-won our freedom and democracy are and how potentially fragile they can be. All of us will hope that Fiji can be restored to democracy as soon as possible and the intentions of the superpowers in our region are for stability peace and prosperity.I have also had the good fortune to work as a locum specialist for Dr Toia Alama at the National Hospital of Samoa in the 1980s. We got to know each other as trainees at the National Women’s Hospital in New Zealand where doctors all over the Pacific do postgraduate work and then return to their homes. The strength of that professional network is inestimable. I have no doubt that we in the Pacific should continue to mutually foster the educational and cultural ties that bind us as a region be they in medicine law business music literature sport or of course politics.By the way Wesley College just happens to be in the Hunua electorate which I am privileged to represent. We have had some stunning rugby players from that extraordinary institution. I will never forget Joeli Vidiri on one wing and Jonah Lomu on the other fresh out of school playing for Counties and smashing the Blues. Thank you Fiji. Thank you Tonga.The inaugural Pacific forum ahead of us will be exciting and worthwhile. It will act as a conduit to progress our mutual challenges and aspirations and remind us that we are guardians of our environment that we have led the way in a South Pacific nuclear-weapon-free zone and that we must strive for democracy choice prosperity peace and true friendship for what my sister-in-law refers to as one great Pacific Garden of Eden. Thank you.