Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you Madam Chair. I can live with that. I remember one time a previous Speaker referred to me as Grant Robertson. It took me a long time to get over that. It took me a long time to recover from that one.Look I just wanted to open by saying that I found it very interesting and I'm disappointed—actually I can't refer to a member that's not in the House. But I found it very interesting in the general debate last week and it's the first time I've ever seen it where you had a Government Cabinet Minister get up and spend his whole general debate speech talking about the Opposition member. That was Ron Mark talking about myself. I was very honoured—I was very honoured that Ron gave me that much attention. It was obvious that he's still pretty sensitive about his Uber habits but I found it interesting that you had a Cabinet Minister get up and instead of actually talking about the things that are actually going on inside his portfolio—namely defence and the great work that our people are doing around the world or the procurement that he's working on or the issues of the day—he got up and he spoke about the Opposition spokesperson for five minutes.I just want to talk a little bit about one of the big issues that he's been talking about—and it's good to see the Minister of Finance in the House too because maybe he may like to take a call and respond to one of the issues that I'm about to talk to now. That's about procurement because a big part of what's going to happen inside New Zealand defence forces this year is going to be procurement. Namely immediately first off the block is going to be the P-8 Poseidon which of course our RNZAF needs to replace our surveillance and intelligence capability which historically—or for the last 52 years—has been delivered through the extremely reliable outstanding P3 Orion. But it's time to retire them. They are 52 years old. Our air force does an amazing job of maintaining them and keeping them flying but fundamentally it's time to invest in some new aircraft to close the capability gap to make sure that we are reliant and we are interoperable with our partners and to give them a new aircraft in the P-8 Poseidon. One of the reasons and one of the issues that's been raised in terms of why this could be an issue or the reason why the decision has been delayed—or as the Minister says why he's kicking the can down the road—is because of our procurement system and the fact that they want to make sure that we're actually getting the best value for money. And that's a good thing; that's something that a Government should be doing. But I just want to highlight something about our procurement system through the Ministry of Defence and I'm just going to make these comments from the last review in relation to procurement: This has included reviewing its project management disciplines procedures policies and practices according to international best [standard].The ministry previously employed eight permanent project management staff in its capability delivery division. It now has 57 … staff. We heard that this has enabled the ministry to build specialist expertise in commercial project management financial management and risk management. The ministry's leaders now also have commercial experience.The ministry has introduced project teams that integrate ministry and [New Zealand Defence Force] staff and it has strengthened its governance and assurance functions. The Secretary of Defence said all of these changes have been implemented in partnership with the [New Zealand Defence Force]."—under a National Government.So you can see that there've already been some major changes some major focus and some major investment into making sure that we get our procurement right. We recognise and understand that as a small nation as a relatively small defence force when we do procure the new equipment—and we've had some hard lessons along the way. The NH90 is a very good example that was tough to bring into service and we had some big issues to deal with—but I would highlight and point out that that procurement decision was taken under the last Labour Government not the National Government.The National Government moved to make sure that our procurement system is world standard and that we don't continue to make the same mistakes that we have made in the past. So my point is this: I'm very interested for either the Minister of Finance or the Minister of Defence to come down and take a call and tell us what exactly they've done to improve our procurement system—what new measures have they captured or what new measures have they implemented that have improved our procurement system which mean that they don't have to purchase or procure the P-8 Poseidon which means that they're going to be able to delay decisions on important procurement decisions through the defence capability paper.Unfortunately I've run out of time but I'd invite the Minister of Finance to stand and take a call and explain to us what changes they're going to make."