Reti ShaneDr SHANE RETI (Deputy Chairperson of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee): It is a pleasure to speak to this the External Sector which as you have mentioned Mr Chair takes into account defence trade humanitarian aid customs disarmament and many other ministries. I am going to limit my comments here this afternoon to defence and customs particularly and I would like to start by talking about the defence white paper that came out a few months ago and set New Zealand's strategic direction strategic imperatives for the next 15 to 30 years. The official defence white paper had some of its genesis in public consultation through 2015 and I think that is really useful because we can see how the official document finally has been informed by that public consultation. If we look at that there were 13 public meetings and a total of 325 submissions to the defence white paper. There were 195 from members of the public and 108 from Defence Force personnel. There were several questions that were asked which helped inform the final document and I have picked out some of them because I think that you can really see how the final document took the lead from what the public was saying. One of those questions was around major threats and the majority of submissions indicated terrorism as a major threat for defence to pay attention to. In terms of international relationship risks the majority of submitters said that Asia-Pacific geopolitical instability—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am going to interrupt the chair of the committee to remind him that the Estimates debate should be relevant to the Government's current spending plans contained in the Estimates of Appropriations. Submissions to a white paper and a white paper published outside the period is not relevant other than the effect that white paper has on spending in this particular year.Jami-Lee Ross: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. At the Estimates hearing itself which the report of the committee covers the defence white paper was canvassed extensively by committee members in questioning the Minister. Clearly the defence white paper has resulted in decisions being made that will carry through into the Government's Estimates. Surely it is in order for the member to mention it.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): If the chair of the committee had in fact reported that then he could well have brought what he subsequently said within bounds. I will take the member's comments on board but I do want to remind members that we are trying to tighten the debate. So I am not quite going to withdraw and apologise but I suggest that in future chairs relate their comments to what happens at the hearings if they think that they might otherwise be out of scope although that just does bring into question whether the discussions at the committee were within scope. We will leave that for now.Dr SHANE RETI: Thank you Mr Chair. In respect of the hearings that were held and the discussions that were held the defence white paper was very important and the point that I was making was that community consultation substantively informed the official document which I would like to talk to now as well. The official white paper looked at the strategic challenges through to 2014. And of course that is what the Estimates of Appropriations are here to fund—some of those strategic challenges. It set out a range of challenges likely to affect New Zealand's strategic interests including rising sophistication in a number of actors operating within New Zealand's exclusive economic zone—and this was important because it was also mentioned exclusively by public submitters—an increased likelihood of terrorist attack in New Zealand a more rapid evolution of cyber threats heightened tensions in the east and south China seas increases in military spending and intensifying turmoil across the Middle East. What the white paper then did was operationalise—and this is where the funding is going to—the Government's commitment as a $20 billion modernisation of the Defence Force and we discussed this with officials during the hearing. That $20 billion modernisation of the New Zealand Defence Force included 13 major purchases. Some of those major purchases included replacement of the current Boeing 757 aircraft—I will not go through all of them—and replacement of the current C-130 Hercules aircraft. I know certainly from Northland that we were part of the very first inshore patrol boats that were built—four of them; and the Rotoiti was the first one—and we are pleased to see that the offshore patrol vessel is also in the Estimates. It includes replacement of the naval tanker HMNZS Endeavour with a more capable and versatile ship cyber support and intelligence support. A network enabled army is what these appropriations are going towards as well. We had the pleasure of being out at Papakura with the Special Operations Forces and we were able to see their new facility a few months ago which is included in part of these appropriations. They were also showing us some of the new equipment that we are voting for in this bill which will give them more performance and more effectiveness in their role. They also pointed out some of the protected mobility the light armoured vehicles which will now be reinforced and land combat weapons. So in summary for this part of the debate the New Zealand Defence Force is a force that preserves New Zealand interests and enhances New Zealand's international reputation with the international community. I would then like to turn to customs as the other area that I want to focus on. The Customs Service continues to apply itself to the increasing passenger and tourism numbers. SmartGate remains a very very effective tool with efficient processing and we discussed this in detail as well. In fact part of that discussion was that the business plan for SmartGate was that the Customs Service would be able to free up some full-time equivalents to do other tasks and we were reassured that yes this is actually happening. Four million people have moved through SmartGate in the last 12 months. We were also told that the appropriations will be going towards detector dogs which are very efficient for mail and low-value and fast freight - type activities. Indeed there is support for another five dog teams. The Budget provided for $1.5 million over 2 years for increased security to customs as a package of $17.1 million over 4 years to further explore the border risk. The sector itself is much wider than the two areas I have focused on—[Bell rung]—notably defence and customs and I am sure my colleagues will speak to other parts of that but I think what this does show is that these Estimates—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Dr Shane Reti.Dr SHANE RETI: I am sorry. These Estimates and appropriations represent a Government that is investing in security humanitarian aid international relations disarmament and trade as we grow our economic and social worth as a country and I fully support these strategies. Thank you.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I think there was some confusion then as to whether the member called or not. I may have been confused and we will not count those last 30 seconds as a call.