Lotu-Iiga Sam: Debate On Pacific IssuesText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLotu-Iiga Sam: Debate On Pacific Issues[Sitting date: 18 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9573. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie): Ou te fa’atulou atu i le paia o le fono fai tulafono. Le Palemene o le malo o Niu Sila. Le paia maualuga le afio o le Kovaga sili. Le afio le afioga le Palemia. Le mamalu le Kapeneta. Le afio lau afioga le Fofoga Fetalai. Le paia tele o sui usufono mai malo eseese. Le Pasefika ae tainane. Le paia maualuga le sui usufono o le Palemene o Aotearoa Niu Sila. Tulou Tulou Tulou lava. O le a ou tautala i le gagana e fa’asino i ai lenei aso.Mr Assistant Speaker I have greeted you in my native tongue of Samoan and I greet members of this House members of Cabinet of course and the Prime Minister and I want to especially welcome the delegates to thePacific Parliamentary and Political Leaders Forum. Delegates I want to thank you personally for venturing here for a week from your valuable family time work commitments and other duties and obligations. It is an honour to speak in this debate firstly as a Pacific person representing the many Pacific people in this Parliament and across this country as well as the fine people of Maungakiekie in Auckland; and secondly as a Pacific person born in Samoa whose family came here seeking a better life. Like many of you in the gallery we came asmigrants here many years ago. My parents wanted a better life for my siblings and me—a better education well-paying jobs to ultimately serve our families and our communities. Finally I am honoured to be a member of this John Key - led National Government and we are committed to the plight of not just Pacific people here in Aotearoa New Zealand but also our Pacific brothers and sisters who are scattered across the many Pacific Islands across the Pacific Ocean.I like my colleagues would like to thank the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee for bringing about this forum. This forum is a consequence of its report to Parliament in 2010. I commend the leadership of John Hayes and the recommendation to foster better relationships with parliamentarians across the Pacific. This was something that was shared with me in my experiences when I visited the Pacific on the many Pacific missions that we go on as parliamentarians here in New Zealand.I think it is significant that New Zealand is hosting this forum and it demonstrates New Zealand’s leading role in the Pacific in which we punch well above our weight in terms of contributions that we make to our Pacific nations. To that end we have heard how we spend over $250 million annually in aid to the Pacific. Of course that is more than half of our aid budget and I would like to thank the Minister of Foreign Affairs the Hon Murray McCully who is not here because he steadfastly increased our commitment of these resources so that we may improve the plight of Pacific people in the Pacific. Of course this aid includes $145 million in funding towards a joint venture with Australia and that will provide over half a million children with education across the Pacific. We have heard domestically that we are assisting Pacific workers with the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme. This provides $25 million in take-home pay much of which is returned to the Pacific.Indeed only last month we have heard we hosted in Auckland the Pacific Energy Summit where we managed to secure donor commitments of $635 million. These funds are to advance renewable energy projects and energy efficiency plans. All these projects do not even go towards some of the other areas that have been mentioned already and they include New Zealand aid projects that focus on non-communicable diseases and sexual and reproductive health as well as strengthening national health systems which we will be hearing about later in our forum.Of course relationships are not just about aid funding. We are here to build on relationships foster cooperation and promote political cohesion across our Pacific boundaries. We will be discussing issues such as health climate change and gender issues. However there is little time and much to discuss so my hope is that other items may find themselves on the agenda during the breaks during the rugby and during the barbecue tonight at Premier House. Some of these subjects include education economic development infrastructure and employment matters. I believe that these matters are interconnected and that education still remains—we have the education Minister Hekia Parata here with us today—the key to unlocking the potential of our Pacific peoples both here in New Zealand and across the Pacific.These are some of the issues that I have been pushing for Pacific people in Aotearoa New Zealand. Therefore these are the issues I am interested in hearing from you our delegates about. I know how much we have to learn from your experiences in the Pacific your unique Pacific knowledge and wisdom and how we can apply those experiences to Aotearoa New Zealand. I know that sustainable economic development cannot happen in an environment where basic education is weak so I would hope that discussions include how we can assist in building models for infrastructure and education. What are effective ways of providing education services and developing a modern workforce to sustain those higher standards in the Pacific? What is the role of the internet in leveraging the learning of kids in the Pacific? As you can see delegates Ihave more questions than answers for you but I am certainly here to listen and learn from your experiences in the Pacific.I would like to use a local example of a project called Manaiakalani. This project has assisted young Pacific and Māori children through wireless networks and affordable netbooks. I know those types of learning models are possible—in fact they are probably happening in the Pacific—and I would like to hear from you delegates during the weekend on this. In terms of infrastructure—apart from the constraints around funding which we all debate and we all disagree upon across this House—we must ask how a project is delivered such that it is sensitive to Pacific cultural values our traditions and our norms while creating opportunities for employment and wealth creation. Those are just some of the things that we grapple with here and I would like to hear from you delegates as to how you deal with them in your nations. May I say that we need to hear your voices in this engagement so that we may better understand how we can engage with you our Pacific neighbours and how we can improve the lives of your people as you can do for the lives of our people here in New Zealand.When we consider issues of economic development we need to assess issues of trade. The Pacific of course has offered much in the way of trade to New Zealand. We have nearly $1 billion annually and it is New Zealand’s seventh-largest export market and our 20th-largest trading market. Herein lies the interesting issue because although we benefit greatly from exports to the Pacific the surplus does not necessarily benefit our Pacific neighbours. Although we all accept that volume of trade is important because it raises all our standards of living we know only too well that extremely large balance of trade deficits can be crippling to countries leading to high levels of Government debt and/or the sale of domestic assets. That is something for you to ponder this weekend and I again urge you to give us some feedback on that.So the question is how we can foster domestic industries that lead to greater exports not just to New Zealand but more global markets. To that end I have raised in select committee financial reviews here in New Zealand how we can assist you with those markets. What can New Zealand Trade and Enterprise do to assist in those markets with introductions to buyers of your goods and services? For the delegates please assist us in how we can address what I believe is a precarious anomaly. But trade is about relationships in foreign lands and can prove expensive distant and out of reach for Pacific traders. Again delegates I challenge you that intra-Pacific trade between your countries as well as between New Zealand and your countries is particularly important. I also urge you to think about markets of value that many of your nations have strong links to—for example the United States Australia and of course of late China. We have also had the Pacific Cooperation Foundation in New Zealand which is a public-private organisation that leverages a lot of those promotions to trade.Finally may I commend to you the work of the annual Pacific Islands Forum which brings together leaders from 15 Pacific nations. This forum I believe complements that work. I look forward to working with you in this forum to support our already strong relationships between our nations. Thank you.