Paul Foster-Bell: General DebateText is subject to correctionPaul Foster-Bell: General Debate[Sitting date: 06 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14418. Text is subject to correction.]PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): We have heard a very effective argument from the Government side in this general debate that the Opposition the Labour Party in particular is becoming the “Yeah Nah Yeah Party” of New Zealand. I would like to reflect on a conference that I attended over the Labour weekend ironically in Tauranga. It was an Institute of Information Technology Professionals New Zealand conference at which I saw exactly that approach acted out in practice.We had Gareth Hughes representing the Green Party. He made a very clear argument against having a national security apparatus in New Zealand. It is something I would utterly disagree with and I think that on this side of the House we are very strong proponents of bringing in appropriate measures to secure our people and our IT networks from attacks from those who would wish to harm us. But Gareth on the other hand made a very clear argument against that approach. He said that we do not need a Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) we do not need the New Zealand SIS we do not want the police involved in counter-terrorism activity and in fact he did not think we should be cooperating with friendly allied nations like the United States the UK and Australia on intelligence gathering. That is an approach I utterly disagree with but at least he had a clear approach and he was outlining what he thought.The Labour Party on the other hand was represented by its recently demoted information and communications technology associate spokesperson who laid out a very peculiar approach. She did not say that Labour was going to repeal what we were doing instantly. She did not say that it was going to actually have an active programme of its own that it would bring in to replace the amendments to the GCSB legislation and the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill—the “TICCS Bill”—which passed yesterday. So Labour has no alternative in place. There would be a royal commission of inquiry a series of inquiries and over a period of time we would be left vulnerable while it goes through a process of consultation and persiflage. I think that we have seen in that particular example a very clear case of Labour adopting the “yeah nah yeah” approach to security. It is a shame because previously that was a party that took the security of this realm very seriously.Over the weekend we had the Labour Party conference in Christchurch. As a strong royalist and a former member of the Monarchy New Zealand group—in fact a former vice chair of Monarchy New Zealand—I was interested to see that one of the remits one of the policy discussions that it was having was on republicanism. Again it was a bit ironic because David Cunliffe walked into the conference to the song “Royals” from Lorde who is a wonderful New Zealand artist—an award-winning platinum-winning New Zealand artist and that is a great song. The lyrics to that song go something along the lines of “Let me be your ruler”. Well I think the New Zealand public will be saying to Mr Cunliffe: “Yeah nah.” to that next year because I think the New Zealand public by and large are utterly supportive of the Queen as our head of State—an absolutely incorruptible person a person who has no desire for higher political office and a person who has no need for financial gain. It is a system that is not broke and does not need fixing.In fact we saw Her Majesty promoting a wonderful New Zealand product just yesterday when she wore the beautiful blue pearl brooch that came from Christchurch that the Prime Minister gave her promoting a great New Zealand company. I think thepunters of New Zealand the public and certainly we on this side of the House are very clear that our approach to that is: “It ain’t broke so don’t fix it.”Others in this House may have a different view. I have heard from Green members that they are very strongly opposed for a range of reasons. But it seems that the Labour Party approach on this is like almost everything else it is doing at the moment. It is: “Yeah nah maybe. Well let’s kick it to a policy committee for further discussion. We might have a referendum in due course when the Queen dies.” It is all very much death by consultation rather than having a clear position that the New Zealand public can understand when we go into the next election campaign.Another issue that I heard at the information technology conference in Tauranga was on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This is something that on this side of the House we have been clear on. We are utterly supportive of liberalising trade with our most important trading partners like the United States like South Korea and like Japan. We already have a pretty open market in this country. For instance the Inland Revenue Department is looking at a new computer system. It is going to open that up to procurement from others overseas. Our companies our bright IT firms should have the ability to get into Government procurement roles in America and elsewhere. Thank you.