Street Maryan: Debate On Pacific IssuesText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStreet Maryan: Debate On Pacific Issues[Sitting date: 18 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9585. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): Kia orakoutoukatoatēnei te mihinui ki a koutou. It is a very great pleasure to stand and speak in Parliament on this historic occasion. This is a unique event and I hope it will not be the last one of its kind.I was a member of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee at the time that we did our report into the relationship between New Zealand and our Pacific neighbours and I want to recognise John Hayes and his work as chair of that committee. Yes there might have been all of that bulldozing and bullying and stuff that went on but the result was good and it was very well worth it. So I do acknowledge him and other members of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee at that time. We are now beginning to reap the benefits of that report and this is one of those moments that have come out of the report.I recently had the great good fortune and the great honour of visiting the Solomon Islands. My colleague Dr Cam Calder and I visited the Solomon Islands to talk with members of Parliament there about the implementation of a report—again another report—that came out of an open forum held last year on Pacific adolescent sexual reproduction and health rights. That report had a number of recommendations in it and one of them was that members of the New Zealand Parliamentarians’ Group on Population and Development which is a cross-party group go and talk with members of Parliament around the Pacific because this was a Pacific report. People had come from Tuvalu from Papua New Guinea from Kiribati and from around the Pacific to contribute to that open forum. We heard from members of Parliament but we also heard at that time from NGOs—those non-governmental organisations that work in the area of sexual and reproductive health and rights particularly with young people.So I was able at that time to not only advance the agenda that came out of that combined report with Dr Cam Calder from the National Party but also I had the privilege of visiting a part just out of Honiara that is called the New Zealand Camp and saw the places where my father served as a member of the New Zealand Air Force in World War II. My father never talked about that experience very much. He was one of that generation who did not discuss what happened in the war much but I remember very well having Solomon Islands visitors come to our house not in a steady stream but visitors who arrived at our house in New Plymouth for years and years and years afterwards because my father had known their fathers. My father had known their parents and their families through his posting to the Solomon Islands at that time. It was a very moving moment for me and I want to acknowledge the contribution that jointly the Solomon Islands and New Zealand forces played at that time.My particular brief is around overseas development assistance and I have that responsibility in shadow terms as associate foreign affairs spokesperson. I have always been concerned about our ability to assist our Pacific neighbours to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. We have not engaged sufficiently I think in the achievement of those goals. I hope in the course of these few days that we will be able to discuss such things as overseas development assistance so that we understandexactly what the needs are so that this is not seen as the distribution of largesse from a country that is better off but as an engagement in partnership to ensure that the peoples of the Pacific are educated are healthy and are well-equipped to make their own decisions for their own futures. Thank you.