Shearer DavidDAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): Kia ora tātou and warm Pacific greetings to all who are here today. It is really lovely to see you. It was certainly good to see the representatives who made it into our select committee this morning. I know that our committee learnt an enormous amount about some of the issues that you face and I think that is what this forum is all about. It is about reaching out and understanding each other.I am following on I should point out from a woman in the Labour Party caucus and there are a number of women who are going to be following behind me in speaking. I am not quite sure why the National Party could not come up with other women but I have to say that I am very pleased to see so many women in the group who have come from across the Pacific and so many young people as well. So a special welcome and a warm welcome to you all who are here.As Su'a William Sio said New Zealand is part of the Pacific. The tangata whenua who came here came from the Pacific. We have a huge Pacific population in Auckland where I come from. But it was interesting that although I grew up in South Auckland—I guess I should have been aware of it—I was not really aware of how much the Pacific meant to me until I was working in Iraq a few years ago before I came into politics.With Iraq being quite a dangerous place at that time we had protection. In our protection ring were Fijians who were in the protection group. In the evenings they would get the guitar out and they would be playing hymns and various other songs in fantastic harmony and I just recognised I guess how much that was part of me and the way that I had grown up played football and done all these other things with these people. But in a sense it felt so familiar and so much part of who I was as a Kiwi and as a New Zealander.We are friends we are part of the Pacific but we also recognise the fact that the Pacific is made up of sovereign nations. We want to work with those sovereign nations as partners in the Pacific. It is to our great advantage to have prosperous nations that are economically viable and are able to sustain themselves whether it be through tourism or increasingly through fisheries—and I want to acknowledge Matua Shane Jones who is here today and who is doing a lot of work in that area—and that work with fisheries cannot be done individually but has to be done as a group and as a whole.Many people have mentioned climate change and I want to mention that as well. This Government we have in New Zealand prides itself on being a fast follower on climate change. [Interruption] That was exactly the terminology that your leader I say to those members over there was using before. A fast follower" means you are at the back—you are at the back of the pack. If we want to have credibility in the Pacific and right across the world we have to be at the front not at the back. So although we might agree on a lot of things in this Parliament with regard to the Pacific on the issue of climate change we are at odds—we are at odds.We want to work with the Pacific nations in developing their education and giving young people—because there are so many young people—those opportunities and we will always always extend a helping hand whenever we can when there is need. I was reminded the other day because I am the Labour Party's spokesperson on defence about our military's involvement in Fiji and Vanuatu during the cyclone and in the tsunami of Samoa and Tonga. We proudly stood up and lent a hand. We have operated as peacekeepers in Timor-Leste in Bougainville in the Solomons. We will do our bit as much as we can and as much as we can in partnership with our Pacific Island nations. We are friends as I said. We are partners. We will always be there because we are part of the Pacific as well. Kia ora tātou."