Delahunty Catherine: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 28 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5382. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Chair. Te mihi nui ki Te Wiki o Te Reo Te Reo rangatira Te Reo tino ātaahua Te Reo tūturu Te Reo kotahi o Aotearoa.[I salute Māori Language Week the noble language the beautiful language the original language and the sole language of New Zealand.]Before I speak about overseas assistance and aid I would like to talk just a little bit about foreign affairs as that is part of the appropriation. How is the war going? How is that going—$65 million worth of it? How is the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement going—that thing that was never going to take away our medicines but we have found out just today that it is going to take away our cheap medicines? It is going really well if you do not think about the real value of the way we use our money in this country. The way we make trade deals the way we actually approach peace and defence is a bit of a disaster and so foreign affairs at the moment defence—a number of these portfolios that are covered by this appropriation—are actually a real mess.We have actually done really well in helping to polarise things further in the Middle East and at the same time in another appropriation we are refusing to take any more refugees except the bare minimum. So on the one hand $65 million is going to promote the wars that create more polarisation; on the other hand we are not going to help people whose lives are destroyed by war. So that is a really great start for foreign affairs.I would like to talk however about overseas development and assistance because it is our privilege to be in Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa the Pacific the wonderful Pacific where we have relationships with a number of Pacific nations. Some of those relationships ought to include a healthy and honest relationship around aid because we are the privileged the wealthy and the exploiter in some cases of the cheap labour of the Pacific—we have been in the past—and so we need to have a robust and ethical overseas development and assistance aid programme.Under the current Government it has become very economics-focused and to our shame there is no more of it. In fact in 2014 our appropriation was 0.27 percent of gross national income (GNI) compared with 0.39 percent for most OECD members. So other countries of a similar size are doing a whole lot better but unfortunately the Government is a bit mean a little bit selfish and is not prepared to go for the real goal for official development assistance which would be 0.7 percent of GNI. We can be the better country because we rely on the relationships we have in the Pacific. Just because we are bigger and more powerful does not mean we should change our aid policies or freeze our aid policies to what they were way back in the old days. If the defence budget can be increased why cannot the official development assistance budget be increased? We are going to make more peace in this world through those aid and development healthy relationships than we are ever going to make by sending people over to kill people who already think that killing people is the solution.So I think it is quite important to look closely at official development assistance and look at what it should be addressing. We are on the Security Council. We are in a position to talk about security and aid and all of those things should be focused on addressing climate change engendering more local participation and gender equity—dare I say it as if anyone saw the New Zealand Herald story today they will know that the Government is not really not very big on gender equity at the moment; its statistics are shameful—but particularly overseas looking at the economic and social rights of recipient countries.So official development assistance needs to be strengthened and it needs to be increased and there needs to be support for the right kind of development. I said this in this Parliament—was it 2 years ago; I cannot quite recall maybe less—when we had a wonderful conference here which the Government did host and fund for Pacific nations to come and talk about the important issues of the Pacific. It was a great conference. The greatest thing about it was its rejection of the Government’s free-trade agenda and the Pacific nations’ rejection of opening their economies—Hon Simon Bridges: I don’t remember that.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: Mr—I cannot remember his title—the Hon Mr Bridges forgets that in the last discussion at that wonderful conference when there was a statement put forward about the Pacific Pacific nations said: “We do not want your idea of development.” Country after country got up and said about this important relationship around overseas development and around assistance and around trade: “We reject your model. We want to protect our resources.” Vanuatu was the first speaker. I can quote you the speech. And they were the first people to say it but country after country got up and said: “We know that the natural resources of our world need to be protected. We know that they are vulnerable. We know that our relationship with Australasia and Aotearoa is important. But we want overseas development and assistance that actually allows us to protect our resources.” They do not want the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement any more than many of us in this country do.