Brownlee Gerry; Dean JacquiHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): This is a rare debate for this House. It's not often that a select committee inquiry is so well-received by the Government that it merits getting Government time for its discussion. I want to echo the thoughts and expressions of the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee the Hon Jenny Salesa in commending the work of the committee itself. Given that most of this was done in the last Parliament then I would also like to recognise Simon O'Connor who was chair during that time.A number of us did serve on that committee during that time and there is some dispute over who actually first moved the idea of having the inquiry. The Hon William Sio would say it's his. I know that Golriz Ghahraman claims it's hers. For the record it was me and I think the fact that there are so many claiming it indicates the genuine desire that we had as a committee to delve into this. Not to be critical because I think that Jonathan Kings and his team at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) do a very very good job in this space a much better job than might have been done some years ago.While we say that there had been a big focus on the Pacific it actually started a lot further back than just the time of the Rt Hon Winston Peters. The Hon Murray McCully had a big big focus on that. The introduction of solar power to get rid of some of the big diesel generators was one of his initiatives as indeed was the Tonga lines initiative putting electrification through all the small villages in that part of the country. I think it is a bit of a testament to the value of that scheme that you do have Pacific Island tradespeople very highly skilled now in the electrification process being picked up to come and work in New Zealand. We need a lot more of that in my opinion because eventually those people will make their life back in their own home islands and they'll have considerable experience to bring to the ongoing development of those communities. The committee had a number of areas that we wanted to investigate essentially. But the Government has through MFAT come back with responses that have grouped them and I think the groupings are very good actually and I think the responses are pretty solid. I don't want to go too much into those but I do want to just sort of for a moment if I could touch on one of the problems that New Zealand has to be aware of and that is that while we are a very much connected country to the Pacific and we have a great deal to offer the Pacific nations as they do for us we are a small player in the aid space and it's getting smaller. The other aspect of aid here is the soft loans that are tending to go into the Pacific. One of the things we learnt is that while a country like China is able to provide $537 million in aid in just the last year to the Pacific at the same time you saw $5.2 billion worth of loans being made to those countries. So about 10 percent of the loan value is remitted as aid. When you start to look at it it's a bit like going to any of the banks here—when you get a mortgage they give you a cashback sort of thing. So we need to be careful that we don't get overly upset about that but recognise that those loans will be used for development projects and we should be working alongside other countries to make sure that whatever expertise we can provide we are able to do so. Whatever involvement that we might be able to jointly do we should be looking at because to starve the Pacific of that sort of funding at a time when they need it would be the wrong thing to do. The other point I'd make is that much of this report was considered—in fact all of it was considered—well before the effects of COVID-19. There's no doubt that that has drastically changed the profile of prosperity in the Pacific. So we do have some interesting times ahead and while the Government's response has said Yep we'll keep on increasing the amount of aid that's able to go to the Pacific." we do have to recognise that we do need to I think in a much stronger way develop those partnerships that end up seeing very tangible things done. One of those was of course a water project in Tonga done in conjunction with China New Zealand engineers and Chinese equipment and then a workforce from both countries including Tonga putting in that water scheme and getting something that is tangible and practical that will assist other people in that country to do better things. I am a great fan of there being aid that establishes business activity or establishes infrastructure in those countries. I think that needs to be the focus of any New Zealand aid moving forward. I know that that essentially along with the obvious sort of programmes that are about social enhancement that have to occur is the intention of the New Zealand Government and is the intention of the delivery agency MFAT. I don't think it's necessary to say too much more. I think this debate will record the efforts that were made by the select committee. It will also record the very positive response from the New Zealand Government to this. More than that it'll recognise that successive New Zealand Governments have had a commitment to the Pacific that will continue for a very long time because this is the part of the world that we live in.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to."