Mitchell Mark: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMitchell Mark: General Debate[Sitting date: 08 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11798. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Firstly I would just like to start by acknowledging the Hon Gerry Brownlee our Minister of Defence who launched our defence white paper this afternoon with the Prime Minister the Chief of Defence Force and with our Secretary of Defence Helene Quilter. I would also like to acknowledge the Minister because he very kindly extended an invitation to both me and the Leader of the Opposition Andrew Little to accompany him recently up to Iraq and Camp Taji to go and visit our troops up there and have a look and see how the mission was going. I am going to come back to that.I just want to speak very quickly about the defence white paper because I was heavily involved in the consultation phase of this and I was very happy to hold and host three meetings—one with the Warkworth RSA one with the Wellsford RSA and we also went up to the Kerikeri RSA. I just want to acknowledge the Chief of Army Major General Peter Kelly and also the Deputy Secretary of Defence Tony Lynch. They both attended these meetings also and I think that highlighted just how important the consultation phase on the defence white paper was.Obviously there was a lot of detail and a lot of the submitters wanted to talk about capital investment and equipment which is important and has been captured in the white paper document but the one thing that did come through very strongly and I just wanted to highlight in the House tonight is just how important the men and women in our New Zealand Defence Force are now and into the future. To highlight that I would just say that one very very common thing that came through from all of the submitters and all the meetings that we held was that the personnel within our Defence Force are the most important capability that we have. Without well-trained experienced people who are motivated and committed to the organisation no capability will ever reach its true potential. That is very true and therefore today in my general debate speech I just want to acknowledge all of our Defence Force personnel whether they be at home or whether they be serving overseas. And I want to acknowledge their families as well who also make a sacrifice when they are away.I would like to refer very quickly to our mission in our Taji. I personally was very interested in this because I was involved back in 2005-2006 in the initial training programme that was established for the newly formed Iraqi security forces. We would be naïve not to acknowledge and say that there were some big challenges in Iraq in terms of the quality of personnel that are available the different loyalties and where those allegiances lie and a central government that has to be able to deal with those things. But that should not stop us from constantly working and trying to increase the support and the level and the quality of those troops who ultimately are tasked with going out and meeting this threat of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or Daesh.The one that I noticed is that—we were very lucky while we were in Taji—one of the divisions that had been on the front line had just returned from the front line in Ramadi and had actually just liberated Ramadi which is a very important strategic town in Iraq and they had pushed Daesh out. They had been very very successful. This was a combat division that had come back to Taji to get some further updated training and also have some junior leadership training delivered by our Anzac mission with the Australians at Taji.The thing that struck me was this: No. 1 they were just very pleased to be back—their attendance numbers were up. Back in 2005-2006 when the Iraqi troops turned up—and let us take the tactical support unit for example which was more or less a special forces unit even they would turn up pretty ragtag—they would not have uniform footwear on; often the footwear that was issued to them would disappear. They would not have a standard uniform that was issued to them. The one thing that I noticed about the troops who were coming back into Taji was that they were very very well presented and well turned out. I use that as a bit of a meter for me to say: “You know what the Iraqi security forces are getting better. The quality of the training is getting better. The way that they deploy is getting better.” That could be judged off the way that they actually turn themselves out and the pride that they take in their own appearance.The one thing that was highlighted through all of our meetings—and I have to say that I was actually very proud of our own defence Minister and the way that he presented and advanced our own interests and stated our case in terms of how we feel the deployment in Iraq—[Bell rung] Am I out of time?