Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you Mr Speaker. Firstly can I too just acknowledge you Mr Speaker in making sure that yesterday you made the best efforts in having every denomination and every religion represented with us in this House. Especially can I thank Imam Nizam ul haq Thanvi. I spent 10 years in the Middle East and during that time I got very used to hearing the call to prayer. I have to say that having him in this House yesterday showing us the grace the compassion the strength that he has and just hearing him reciting the prayer actually gave me a great deal a real sense of comfort. So I want to thank and acknowledge you for that.I do want to acknowledge our Muslim community in Christchurch. I think the Prime Minister said it best yesterday when she said We can't truly understand the pain that you're going through." But I hope that they feel that we're right alongside them and our presence is constant and there with them in the coming days as they continue to grieve and they'll receive that support from us.Can I acknowledge our first responders. This is very important. Amy Adams—the two police officers from Selwyn we know that they deserve the highest recognition that we can give them for the bravery for the professionalism and for the self-sacrifice that they made to make sure that this person was not capable of actually wreaking more harm and havoc on our community. But I want to acknowledge the rest of the first responders too. I want to acknowledge our police our fire service our paramedics and our New Zealand Defence Force personnel that deployed as well because in the chaos of those initial hours we didn't know whether there was another active shooter we didn't really have a clear idea what the threat was; and yet every single one of those first responders was still out there on the ground putting themselves at risk to protect the community still not understanding or knowing the true nature of the threat. So I really want to acknowledge them and thank them and I think every single one of them is a hero and deserves our recognition. I also want to acknowledge the staff the doctors the nurses and the medical personnel that fought hard to keep the people alive that were arriving in mass numbers with terrible gunshot wounds. I can only just imagine what that scene would have been like. I want to acknowledge them and let them know that we're there for them as well.Although our focus should be on the people of Christchurch at the moment the reality of it is that this attack has affected Kiwis all over the country. I know that in my own electorate I've had people come forward. I just want to quickly acknowledge my electorate of Rodney. I want to acknowledge Ōrewa College; 2500 students turned out for—I don't know if people have seen it—the "Kia Kaha" message. Matakana Primary School this Friday at 1 p.m. has got the "Hands of Hope". I'm going up there myself. The community's going to turn out just to hold hands because they want to send a message of love they want to remind people that that's what we're about as a country. I want to thank all the people that came forward and said "Our homes are open"—these are people in my electorate so on the other end of the country north of Auckland—"our baches are available we will do whatever we need to do for our people in Christchurch. If they need some relief if they need to get out we're there for them." On the Friday night through Facebook—through Messenger—I had a complete feeling of helplessness because I had people messaging me all night saying "We're terrified. The doors are locked. The curtains are pulled. We can hear helicopters in the air and we can hear sirens on the street." They were utterly terrified. The reality of it is even if they weren't directly affected by the attack if they were locked down if they were stuck in their homes or if they hadn't been reunited with their loved ones this is going to have a big psychological toll. I was very pleased to hear the Minister of Health restate that there's going to be resources and help put in place. If you look around the world this is fundamentally important now in terms of what we do.I just want to finish very quickly with my own statement. I spent 10 years overseas in countries like Iraq Afghanistan Somalia and Sudan working to disrupt and prevent terrorist attacks on civilian populations. I can tell you now I've seen evil acts by men in the name of just about every religion. But what they do is they take that religion and they twist and corrupt it for their own hateful view of the world. We are a peace-loving nation and now it's up to us as a Parliament to work hard together to ensure that this type of twisted hate can't be allowed to arrive and ferment on our shores again. Thank you Mr Speaker."