Twyford PhilHon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister for Disarmament and Arms Control) (remote): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to speak in support of this bill this evening. As always is the case with war the impact is felt most severely by ordinary people and I know colleagues in the House tonight will have been watching online and watching on television and seeing the images of families and children uprooted in the face of explosive weapons going off in their urban neighbourhoods. The latest reports—I think two million people are fleeing across Ukraine's borders; half of that number are children. It's tragic it's completely unnecessary and it's absolutely essential at this point in time that the international community rallies to impose the maximum cost possible on President Putin for what is an egregious breach of the UN Charter and a betrayal of humanity.I won't rehearse many of the arguments that colleagues have already been running through this evening but I do want to observe that there's a long tradition of bipartisan cooperation in the whole area of foreign policy in New Zealand and that's as it should be. But there are differences amongst us and there are differences between the parties in matters of emphasis. It was very clear to me listening to the speech of the Hon Gerry Brownlee this evening that he represents a tradition on the centre-right of politics that is less committed and less devoted you might say than we are on the left of politics to the institutions of the multilateral system of international law. There's a reason—there's a very good reason—that this Government is taking a thoughtful approach to the question of autonomous sanctions. That is because we have always—and in fact successive Governments for a long long time have—taken the view that the UN system is the appropriate place to have those discussions and to build coalitions and to use the might of sanctions to impose a cost on countries that transgress. Now it's obvious to everybody that for a member of the P5 like Russia to launch a completely unprovoked and unjustifiable invasion of its neighbour to threaten the use of nuclear weapons and countless other breaches of international law over the last couple of weeks makes a mockery of the UN system. It does but it is within our capability to grasp some progress and hope for the future of the international system from the jaws of this tragedy. And we can see that in the way that the international community has rallied around: countries businesses international organisations. There's been a remarkable mobilisation across the planet of people determined to make Vladimir Putin pay. We can be part of that—and we must—and that is why we are bringing this bill to the House this evening. It should be a point of great satisfaction to us all that this House is unanimous in seeing it through. But—and there is a but—we must take an equally muscular approach to strengthening buttressing and reinvigorating the multilateral institutions and international law. That has to be the way forward because if we don't the world will be a much more dangerous place and there will be other Putins there will be other invasions. So I stand in support of this bill. It is an excellent bill. It is allowing us to stand shoulder to shoulder with the international community in solidarity with the people of Ukraine sending a very sharp message to President Putin that this invasion of Ukraine cannot be allowed to stand and the international community will make him pay a very very significant price for it. Thank you Mr Speaker.