White HelenHELEN WHITE (Labour) (remote): I don't accept that this bill has anything to do with the Ukraine but I do want to extend my worries and thoughts to the Ukrainian people today. Having said that I would like to address this bill which is one that absolutely needs to be passed.This is the Maritime Powers Bill and it will mean that we are able to extend New Zealand law to New Zealand flag ships internationally. We'll also be able to extend New Zealand law to foreign-flagged ships that are in our economic zone and that zone is actually really big. It's one of the largest economic zones in the world so it's very important that we are able to do that. What this bill does is that it actually builds on the Search and Surveillance Act the Customs and Excise Act the Fisheries Act and it uses the same kinds of powers—in our extraterritorial waters and internationally—on our own ships. So it allows us to take what we've already learnt about what works and put it in those settings. It means that if people are exploiting labour in those waters if they are conducting drug deals if they are pirates we are able to do something about that urgently. I was thinking about the kind of people who do that work. Those kinds of people are really in a very vulnerable situation the police and the defence forces and the customs officers and even the Department of Conservation when they are carrying out those activities they can't rely on the backup that you would rely on if you were on land. They are in a dangerous situation. So it's incredibly important that we support them fully. This law will do that.What it does allow is it allows a search without warrant. There were some issues raised about that but it does have a tempering of that because the warrant if you do a search without warrant under the fact you must actually report that to the commissioner of police. So there's oversight because this Government is very mindful of the rights of people and making sure that the response we have is proportionate but also that we are watching these things. So we are making sure that there is no exploitation of them. Now our Minister Nanaia Mahuta talked about the importance of this in a changing world because we are—as unfortunately we know this week—in a very changing world. We need those sorts of powers that make our territories secure and make it something where we know that we are going to be able to actually respond in a way that is appropriate in an ever changing situation. We're going to rely much more than we ever did on the sea for our supply and it's so important that those supply ships can come in and we know exactly where we stand and those people policing those situations have our backup.I wanted to just talk about the hazards that are in that work because it is one of those things that's very very real. The hazards are actually that people would have guns on those boats. They would be carrying out acts without any sense of the law of New Zealand. And that would happen. So these people who are going on to those boats really do step into an incredibly vulnerable situation. So this is a situation where people can go in if there's reasonable grounds to suspect and if there is a reasonable belief to suspect but they have to do so in terms of a serious offence. So it's not something which they would do lightly and that's been built into the Act too. Finally this is consistent with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and that's really important because I think we've all realised over the last few days—perhaps been reminded—that it's incredibly important that we actually work as a community. And so the UN conventions are incredibly important and I think we're starting to work much more as a community and see that it's important that we actually work as a group and in a unified way when it comes to the areas that join us. That kind of mentality is something that I welcome in a post-pandemic world where we actually very much need to rely on our community of ethics and laws. So thank you. I commend this bill to the House.