Macindoe TimHon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you Madam Chair. May I begin by acknowledging that envy is not a particularly attractive quality in anybody but I am suffering deeply from envy on two counts. One is that my successor as the Minister of Customs has what the Hon Maurice Williamson another former Minister once said to me was without doubt the best portfolio of the lot. In fact his language was far more colourful in describing how fortunate I was to have been allocated that but I did very quickly come to acknowledge that. I also want to say how envious I am of the current Minister for the fact that she has been able to see the Customs and Excise Bill become an Act because the whole time that I was a Minister it was stuck on the Order Paper not quite able to get up to that level of priority required for progress. But as we have seen the current Government having no legislation of its own was only too pleased to be able to pick up such an outstanding bill and I do congratulate the new Minister in being able to get it over the line.I was delighted that yesterday they had a formal acknowledgment of that and I was very sorry I wasn't able to attend but I sincerely thank you and I sincerely wish the Minister well in that portfolio. Could I also just quickly acknowledge the very fine men and women of the New Zealand Customs Service: it was my great privilege to be their Minister—for too short a time I have to say. They do an outstanding job in protecting our borders—and never underestimate how significant a challenge that is—but also as is perhaps not as often acknowledged in facilitating trade in this country. The Minister has just touched on some of the reasons for that and again I thank them. They are an outstanding group of men and women and they serve our country extraordinarily well.When we were last debating this particular external relations theme of the Appropriation Bill news came through of the decision of Lieutenant General Tim Keating to stand down from his position as Chief of the New Zealand Defence Force. I just want to say quickly how grateful we should all be to Lieutenant General Keating for the service he has rendered to this country since 36 years ago when he first joined the New Zealand Army as an officer cadet. He rose through the ranks. In February 2011 he was appointed Chief of Army in December 2012 he was appointed the Vice Chief of the Defence Force and since January 2014 he has served as Chief of the Defence Force.I think that most of us would acknowledge the fact that we are very proud of all our armed service personnel who serve us with courage and distinction both at home and abroad. All New Zealanders I think have reason to be grateful for the valour with which our Defence Force personnel undertake a myriad of important roles—and one of them of course has just been alluded to by the Minister of Customs: they back up their work. But also whether it's in peacekeeping military training back-up for conservation civil defence operations—it crosses just about the whole gamut of important aspects of protecting our country. So I wish the Lieutenant General well and all who have served under him and I thank him for his exemplary service.Of course we have under consideration at the moment foreign affairs. Now traditionally in New Zealand foreign affairs has been something that has largely operated in a bipartisan manner and I think that that is a good thing. However it is deeply disturbing—and I say this as the National Party's new associate spokesperson for foreign affairs and trade—that at the moment you'd have to say New Zealand's foreign policy at least in regard to the recent Russian nerve agent attack in Salisbury in the United Kingdom but also on related trade issues has been incoherent and frankly deeply disturbing. All other countries with which we would normally associate ourselves very quickly responded to the considerable weight of evidence in that particular issue and supported our strongest allies—the UK and also the United States the Australians the European Union and many others with whom we are traditionally associated—in condemning that attack and coming to the support of the United Kingdom; but not New Zealand for a very long time.And when we finally did we had the extraordinary position of seeing the New Zealand Government's website being altered mysteriously after an initial press release had been issued in which the Foreign Minister's comments were completely absent. It was only some days later that this press release was doctored. We are yet to hear why and who was responsible for that but it does show that things are deeply incoherent at the moment. In his obsession with pursuing a trade agreement with Russia we have a Foreign Minister who seems to be going off on his own in ways that I'm quite sure his coalition partners are not at all comfortable with.I wish that there was more time. I would like to talk a little bit more about the customs portfolio but again I close as I did at the beginning by saying what an honour it was to be their Minister and to thank them for the way in which they have served our country.