Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Well I'm very pleased that the—Hon Grant Robertson: This will make up for not getting those questions.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Sorry what was that from the Minister of Finance?Hon Grant Robertson: This will make up for not getting any questions.Hon MARK MITCHELL: I'm very pleased to see that the last speaker Marama Davidson who is now part of the new coalition Government is in a position to change all those things and take some positive action on it. We're almost 12 months into this new Government and we haven't seen a lot of things actually happen or occur.It's a great privilege to take a call on this the Appropriation (2018/19 Estimates) Bill at the third reading and I'm going to talk about three areas. The first is defence the second is justice and I'm also actually going to talk a little bit about how this Budget related and has had an impact directly on my own electorate of Rodney.So on defence: the Limited Service Volunteers (LSV). The LSV announcement was a very good one. The Limited Service Volunteers programme—a programme that I've been a huge supporter of myself—Hon Willie Jackson: I was a patron.Hon MARK MITCHELL: A patron? Me too so well done. I think we would acknowledge across the House that it is an excellent programme that's delivered outstanding results for young people. I want to acknowledge the members of the defence forces that work in that programme social development and also the police—they have police mentors involved in it as well.So I was very pleased to see that the Minister of Defence went to Whenuapai recently and turned the first sod on the new facility that was approved through the National Government because we obviously saw the importance and were making a very big investment a big capital investment into supporting that programme. I was very pleased to see also that there was an announcement made around expanding the LSV programme but I was disappointed to see that the funding required to actually expand the programme has not been allocated.So I'd be very keen for someone on the Government benches to take a call and explain why the funding hasn't been allocated and when it's actually going to come online because at the moment within LSV they're finding it very difficult to actually implement the wish of an expansion without the funding to back it up and make it happen. So that was very disappointing to see in this Budget and I'd be very happy for someone to take a call on the Government benches and explain why that has happened.The P-8A Poseidons—what a great decision. The finance Minister the Hon Grant Robertson is in the House. Well done. Good decision on funding and purchasing those P-8A Poseidons. I had to listen to the defence Minister stand and tell us all about how we'd kicked the can down the road and hadn't made the decision and it was his decision and puff his chest out and sort of thump his chest a bit like the little Napoleon and all the rest of it. But the fact of the matter is this: I was very pleased to get feedback from our coalition partners to say We recognise that actually the heavy lifting and all the work that was done to make the P-8A Poseidons a viable option for the incoming Government was done by the previous Government." And if anyone wants to stand and take a call and refute that then I would welcome you to do that.Hon Grant Robertson: Heavy lifting! You and I have got quite a different definition of heavy lifting.Hon MARK MITCHELL: That's the feedback that we got from—look maybe you want to get at the gym with "Nashy" and push some barbells around with him. The phone just looks a little too heavy.So I was very pleased to get that feedback and see that they'd acknowledged that actually we had put a lot of hard work in.I want to acknowledge the staff at the Ministry of Defence that actually worked very hard particularly with their counterparts in the States to put that deal together and make sure that it happened. It's very important. It means that we've closed the capability gap and we've got interoperability with our partners and they're going to be a great aircraft for us into the future.Deployments: it would be nice to see some decisions around deployments because I noticed that in this Budget there's been no provision made for the ongoing deployments of our troops in the Sinai in Afghanistan or in Iraq.Hon Grant Robertson: The contingency that you guys put in. It's still there.Hon MARK MITCHELL: It's the contingency is it? I just wonder why the decisions are being pushed off until November. I think that in the Sinai we've had a long commitment up there—a very important one in terms of a UN-led mission that is definitely without a doubt making a major contribution to maintaining stability and peace in the region.The second deployment: the deployment to Iraq—this is a critically important one. Not only am I very proud of what our troops have been doing up there for the last 2½ years—they've trained over 30000 Iraqi combat troops who have been fighting on the front line against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and who take on enormous risk and suffer huge losses. Their increasing capability—actually the important work around rules of engagement that our troops have delivered up there to these front-line troops has been enormous and I want to acknowledge them the work and the contribution that they've made overall with our coalition partners and the Iraqis in actually really taking this fight to ISIS. And really now they're in a bit of a mop up stage in terms of heading down through the Euphrates River Valley.But the most important part of that deployment is yet to come and that is the stabilisation. If you look at our history over the last 20 or 30 years with the West and deployments and these coalitions it's that we go in we do some very good work we can remove the threat but then we move—this is my view: we leave too early. We actually need to stay and we need to remain committed to the stabilisation. And this is what's going to be critically important now. We've got an important role to play in that and it's also very important that we stay united with our historic partners and we remain committed and have the intestinal fortitude to stay there and help Iraq stabilise and not allow that vacuum to reappear where groups like ISIS will very quickly fill the vacuum and will see the problem—a global problem—emerge again very quickly. So I'd like to see the current Government take a call and just give us an indication and say "Actually we recognise the importance of this and we're going to recommit to leaving our troops up there in support." especially in Iraq over stabilisation.Justice—the disappointing thing about the budget for justice was this: the biggest increase in allocation was about the review of the general election. With everything else that's happening inside the justice portfolio the biggest increase was around reviewing the general election which is really about us right? So that was it. That was the biggest increase.The other thing that we've seen in terms of justice is that we've got the Criminal Justice Summit coming up next week. We'll be attending that and we're committed to going along there with an open mind. When you look at the agenda it's very weak. It's very flimsy. There's nothing there in terms of desired aims goals or outcomes. It really just appears to be a talkfest. But we'll go in there with an open mind and we'll make a genuine contribution where we think we can in terms of what this Government's plans are.But to us it's already emerging. It's already become pretty clear that the investment into corrections has not been the investment that's needed to be able to deal with the capacity that's going to be required. There's no plan—there's no serious plan that's been forward around how to deal with meth how to deal with organised crime or how to deal with the gangs. These are the issues that should be discussed—these are the issues after nine 10 11 months should be starting to emerge and we should have a clear idea around.Instead what we've seen is a half-hearted effort—or actually on the part of the justice Minister a committed effort—to get the three-strikes legislation repealed. But that got shot down before it got to Cabinet because the coalition partner pulled their support for it when they saw how unpopular it was with the general public and they let their feelings be known.So the only thing that we can see happening in the justice portfolio at the moment is a determined commitment to diluting our bail laws our sentencing laws and our parole laws. And what that basically equates to what that means is that the offenders dangerous offenders—and make no mistake: the people that go to prison should be in prison. On average they have about 46 convictions—Hon Willie Jackson: Not all of them. That's not true.Hon MARK MITCHELL: —before they go. Well if that's not true someone take a call and point out to me the people that shouldn't be in prison. I know that you immediately point at the remand; yeah let's have a look at the remand. But I can tell you right now the side that I will always fall on and that is balancing up public safety and community safety against having someone actually sitting in remand. The Government should take responsibility for that instead of outsourcing and passing the responsibility back into the community and we will continue to take a stand against that.So unfortunately I've run out of time but I would welcome anyone from the Government benches to take a call and respond to any of the issues that I've raised in my speech. Thank you very much."