van de Molen TimTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato) (remote): Thank you Mr Speaker.SPEAKER: Welcome.TIM VAN DE MOLEN: Thank you. Can I start by firstly thanking members from across the House who have reached out with offers of support over the last couple of months. It's been a particularly challenging time and I really appreciate those who have reached across political boundaries in particular to express their concern and your well wishes for my recovery. I would also just like to of course note the support from the wider Waikato community and across the country. I have been inundated with wonderful messages from all of my fantastic constituents around the Waikato who have sent cards or messages online and it has been really wonderful and heartfelt and a huge help as I've transitioned through this challenging time. Lastly of course family and friends and my incredible wife Hilary—I will note right here that she is fantastic. Now right the reason I have sought or requested to take a call in this debate is because as National's spokesperson for defence I am becoming increasingly concerned that we are in an evolving a dynamic a challenging and a very concerning situation globally as well as domestically. I think we can all understand some of the implications of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and what that might mean for us as well as any other country around the world reflecting on the capability of their defence force to provide support and to defend the interests of their country when necessary. Now we absolutely condemn the actions of the Russian Federation with that invasion and have expressed support for Ukraine but unlike a lot of our Western allies we haven't gone much further than expressing that support. We've seen a little bit of aid in terms of some second-hand helmets and body armour—possibly some of the stuff I wore a number of years ago—and I'm sure that has been helpful. But actually we heard yesterday and today that the Minister had sought support from Cabinet to send lethal aid and that was declined. Now in an environment like this it's becoming increasingly important to identify where we stand from a values-based perspective and standing alongside our traditional allies and in this particular instance standing alongside Ukraine and the defence of their own sovereignty and their own freedoms it's absolutely vital that we stand up strongly in protection of those rights and those values and I don't think we've been sending that signal strongly enough from New Zealand so I would ask the Government to do a lot more. The defence Minister needs to be stronger in convincing his Cabinet colleagues that they should approve this additional aid. We heard in question time today his answer that they're doing what has been asked. Well they're clearly not. President Zelenskyy from Ukraine has specifically requested Javelins as support. We have some; we haven't sent them. We need to be looking at providing support making it clear where we stand in support of these values and these rights to align with our traditional partners because if we can't do that now then when will we? When is the right time to stand up for values? Alongside that we have the concerning news just recently that the Solomon Islands have now signed an agreement with China that is providing enhanced access for China into the Solomon Islands theatre. Now part of the 2021 defence assessment that was released late - last year made it very clear that there were two specific issues identified through that assessment. One was around adapting to the challenges of climate change and the other was around dealing with the increased strategic competition within our region. Now that's an area where we need to step up. We need to be showing a much stronger level of leadership and we're not seeing that from our defence Minister or from our Government at this stage. We need to be making it very clear where we stand and what our priorities are. We saw just a week or two ago that the defence Minister now has scrapped plans for the previously proposed investment in a Southern Ocean patrol vessel and who knows what else is going to be scrapped from the Defence Capability Plan in 2019. This was an impressive piece of work that was put out back then that had a range of priorities under navy air force army and in the information domain as well. Yet we're seeing those now being pushed out with no clear time frame no commitment being made and it's very concerning for what the future might be for New Zealand. And so I'll call on the defence Minister to step up to show some real leadership and to support New Zealand's interests when it really matters from a values-based perspective. Thank you Mr Speaker.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.