King AnnetteHon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): As a new member of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee I was not able to be there for the annual review but I have read with interest the report that came out of that committee.But I want to begin by congratulating the new Minister of Foreign Affairs the Hon Gerry Brownlee. Gerry I think is well positioned to take this place. He is very pragmatic he does have very good chairing ability and I think one thing he is going to need in this portfolio is a good sense of humour—and Gerry has all those attributes. Actually I think he will probably be a very good Minister of Foreign Affairs following on from Mr McCully who had rather a rocky road in this area.When I looked at the annual review there were a number of things that stood out for me from the report. First of all the Auditor-General recommended that there needed to be some improvements in the ministry's management of its control environment its financial systems and a number of other areas. Although I cannot be explicit about that I am sure the committee will be keeping a watchful eye for improvement next year when the officials appear before them.But the thing that really stood out for me was the report on New Zealand's time on the Security Council of the UN—our 2-year stint on the Security Council. As we all know it took a lot of work going right back to the Rt Hon Helen Clark to prepare for our bid to get on the Security Council which we achieved. One of the standout achievements if you like of our time on the council has to be UN Resolution 2334 which was adopted in the last minutes of our time on that council on 23 December last year when New Zealand was one of the movers of this resolution. It was voted on by all members except the US which abstained and it was the resolution to reaffirm the position of Governments of New Zealand not just this Government but previous Governments over many years that settlements established by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal—are illegal—and are a major obstacle to achieving a two-State solution.That was a very significant move by New Zealand. It did not go without criticism from Israel. In fact there was diplomatic retaliation at the time and I have to say that I was pleased to see that the Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr Brownlee has said today that he is going to move swiftly to restore diplomatic relations with Israel and he has already written to Prime Minister Netanyahu. But he also said at the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee that New Zealand is committed to speaking out against the settlement and it does not matter what the views of the Prime Minister of Israel are—that is the position we have held and held strongly for a long time. But of course we want to improve diplomatic relations with Israel which has been a long-time friend of New Zealand.The second issue that was raised in the report is how well our representation did on the Security Council in terms of the developing small Island States. I suppose the way you can judge that is from what those small States said in their feedback and they believed that our time on the Security Council was pretty successful particularly in our ability to champion the small States at the Security Council. In fact we managed to ensure that there was a session held on behalf of the small States where for the first time they got to speak at the Security Council so that can be ticked off as an achievement from our time there.But perhaps the most controversial thing that came out of the report is the Auditor-General's inquiry into the Saudi Arabia food security partnership. It is quite obvious that the new head of foreign affairs the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade said that he accepts the Auditor-General's criticisms that were made of the handling of a very sensitive issue—handling where it appears as if the officials themselves were provided advice as to how they could deflect questions from committee members at last year's annual review. I do not believe that issue is dead.