Mitchell MarkMARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Firstly can I acknowledge and welcome our delegation from the Pacific Islands here to our Parliament. Although I am a Palagi I would like to—Carmel Sepuloni: Really?MARK MITCHELL: Yes that may be a surprise but that is true. After having seen the Speaker make such a valiant effort at greeting everyone in their own languages I thought that I would do the same thing today in the House. Talofa lava malo e lelei bula vinaka faakalofa lahi atu kia orana fakatalofa atu malo ni and mauri.Can I also acknowledge our Minister for Pacific Peoples Minister Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga. Can I acknowledge our Ambassador for Pacific Economic Development Matua Shane Jones who was also a very famous Parliamentary Rugby Team player and prop for many years with Kris Faafoi—welcome. It is great to see you back in the House. Can I also take the opportunity as the chair of our Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee—and I acknowledge David Shearer; Assistant Speaker Lindsay Tisch is also a member of that committee and David Bennett—to say that we took the decision that we felt it was very important to support this forum and we therefore as a committee sponsored it.Carmel Sepuloni: Isn't Megan Woods on the committee too—the only woman?MARK MITCHELL: I am coming to that Carmel—be patient. We decided as a committee that we would form a subcommittee to make sure the planning was done properly so that the experience that you had here had plenty of substance and you would go away knowing that you had had some positive engagement. So the subcommittee was formed. It was chaired by Alfred Ngaro and Jo Hayes. Carmel Sepuloni Su'a William Sio and Fletcher Tabuteau from New Zealand First were the members of that subcommittee. They have been meeting now for several months and they have worked very hard together as a team to make sure that we could do the best that we could to provide you with a forum that had some real value. Can I please also put on the record in the Hansard an acknowledgment of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials Anton Jonathan and Jessica who have supported that committee; the Speaker's office—Steve and Winton. Can I acknowledge our Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee secretariat—John Matthew and Charlie—who also provided support to the committee. I want to just very quickly touch on a point that David Shearer made in terms of the engagement that we had this morning with some of you in the delegation. We had Selina Napa from the Cook Islands we had Madame Sylvana Puhetini from French Polynesia we had Isabelle Kaloi-Bearune from New Caledonia we had the Hon Johnny Koanapo Rasou—whom I see in the gallery—from Vanuatu we had England Iuta from Kiribati and we had Dr Puakena Boreham whom I also see still in the gallery. I want to acknowledge you and I just want to say that the level of engagement—unfortunately we had only an hour and a half. I think we would all agree that was not long enough. We had some wonderful engagement with you. Some of the issues that were raised and discussed were women's participation and representation in Government climate change and diversifying the economy. It was raised that New Caledonia is going through a big transition at the moment because of the drop in the price of nickel which is one of its primary sources of income. We spoke about West Papua—there was a very good engagement discussion around West Papua. We spoke about foreign investment which is obviously a very sensitive subject in terms of attracting good foreign investment and what that means for your countries. I have to say that there was a very good discussion led by the Hon Johnny Rasou around corruption and the development of very robust governance to be able to deal with that and address those sorts of issues. We all know that corruption is the thing that will hold economies and countries back—if there is anything that will do it it is prolific corruption. So I just wanted to acknowledge and say that just the level of engagement that we had on the committee signified to me that this forum is incredibly important. Everyone who was invited to it has been recognised as having a leadership role in the future of their nation in the nation that they are representing and I just want to acknowledge you and thank you for making the effort to come here and engage with us. Thank you.