Collins Judith: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCollins Judith: General Debate[Sitting date: 08 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11794. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Corrections): I am not known to shy away from a bit of a fight but the thought of the Greens being in the Government is actually enough to get me going and in fact I am thinking that if that ever happens we will all have to leave the country.I am a huge fan of the Rt Hon Helen Clark. I think everyone knows I am much more of a fan now she is in New York and not here but I am actually a fan of hers because I like the fact that she has got some courage and she says what she thinks and also she had to deal with all sorts of issues in her own party and she brought them together with a moment of unity in the years that she was in charge. I think that she was incorrect in one area—well many actually but one in particular—notable today as I recall her describing New Zealand as being in a benign strategic environment.Do you know what? You could not get more wrong now. If you travel overseas you start to see just how not very benign at all our strategic environment is. You stay in New Zealand you get involved in areas like police or even corrections defence the security agencies—you get to realise pretty quickly that it is not that benign anymore. The fact is that we have a very difficult presence in the world. Sometimes it is called IS Daesh all sorts of other things but it is actually about violent extremism and that is an area where I have a role as the leading Minister in countering violent extremism.It is very fortunate having been Minister for Ethnic Affairs and actually meeting and knowing many people across the whole spectrum of religions and ethnicities in New Zealand. But of course violent extremism is not limited to people of ethnicities other than the dominant ethnicities and population base in New Zealand. It can be across everywhere. This is actually a huge issue which is why I was really pleased with the $20 billion modernisation programme for our Defence Force because it is incredibly important that our Defence Force is able to assist New Zealand and promote New Zealand’s interest but also that it can in fact defend itself against cyber - intelligence and attack—so too the New Zealand Police. The New Zealand Police holds a tremendous amount of information. I do not think most of us here would want to see that compromised by any lack of attention. We also have of course our Special Air Service. This Government funded and promoted the battle training facility in my electorate of Ardmore. That is a tremendous facility and I was able to be there for its opening and it is yet again another example of our commitment.We are currently ranked I understand 18th in the world for cyber-attacks and last year when I had slightly more time on my hands than I do now I travelled to New York and met with one of the world’s leading insurance brokers to talk to them about what they saw as the growing trends in threats to countries and to business. The No. 1 threat by far is in fact cyber-attack. They saw this as something that is very very difficult to insure against. It is very difficult to do anything about it there is also so much ransom and so many attacks go on that never get any publicity. Obviously it is a huge issue for banks insurance companies and all sorts of businesses particularly those trading and with intellectual property. This area should not ever be discounted but I understand from these people that it is actually often used as one of the ways in which terrorism is financed—that and oil and other things like that.We need to look no further than to what the UK has had to deal with even recently. Recently I was in the UK. They told me that they had 300 violent extremists in their prisons. We have got probably two. This is an issue that is coming our way. This review—this white paper in defence—is well on time. It is appropriate and it is something that we will no doubt need to consider as time moves on. Thank you.