Robertson GrantHon GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Prime Minister): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. I want to start essentially where the member who's just resumed his seat the Hon Gerry Brownlee ended and that is with having my first opportunity really in this House to express my deep sorrow for the people of the Ukraine for what they are going through at the moment. We are a very long way from the Ukraine but two things stand out in my mind. The first is the images that we see on television of innocent people especially children being caught up in these kinds of conflicts. It is heart-breaking and it is the result—as both the speakers in this debate have already said—of an unprovoked invasion by Vladimir Putin that is a flagrant breach of international law. The second group of people I want to note are the Ukrainian community in New Zealand. We have a number of people of both Ukrainian extraction and more recent migrants in New Zealand not as many as some other countries like Canada and so on but enough for us to be really aware of the impact that this is having on the Ukrainian diaspora around the world. I want to take the time in this House now to acknowledge particularly those whose loved ones either have had to move and have had to shift and who have been directly affected by bombing but also just the stress that goes with knowing that your family members are under attack in the way they are. I want the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian people in New Zealand to know that the Government—and indeed I am sure this House—is standing with them at this very very difficult time. This piece of legislation has come to the House under urgency and whenever that happens we all need to take a breath and recognise why we would do that. I don't think there are many situations that justify urgency more than the invasion of a sovereign country in the way that this has happened by Russia. We need to take all the steps we can to stand alongside them. It is also one of the reasons why this is a very targeted piece of legislation. It's a piece of legislation that focuses on the Russian invasion. It does allow us to be able to be specific in our sanctions whilst taking the time to consider what further regime we might have and I will return to that question before I finish my speech today. So having the ability to move swiftly and in a targeted way I believe justifies the use of urgency here and I'm pleased that the House is focused on it today. The use of sanctions in this way in the design of the bill is flexible and I want to congratulate my colleague the Hon Nanaia Mahuta for bringing the bill to the House. Because we are using a regulatory approach to do this we can not only move quickly and targetedly but we also have the flexibility to move in lock step with other like-minded nations. I hate to say this in this House but I'm not sure this will be a short conflict. Unfortunately I believe this is likely to be quite an extended one with an enormous impact on the people of the Ukraine and it will mean that there may well be a need to continually look at what the international community can do to put pressure on Vladimir Putin and the Russian regime. Therefore having a sanctions regime that as has been built within this piece of legislation is flexible enough to continually respond is important. So I think the design of the legislation is clever and I think it's the right response for us to be able to deal with where the situation may evolve to. I do want to note for the record that of course the Government did move within the confines of the law and the confines of our current sanctions approach quickly. So we did move to put people on a travel ban list we did move to make sure that there was no way we could be exporting to support the Russian military and we have continued to take steps in that regard. We were one of the first countries to front up with humanitarian aid support and the Minister of Immigration has given an outline of the kinds of steps we're taking to support those who need to leave Ukraine particularly those who already have people here in New Zealand. There are a number of different ways we can do this. Just as a small aside in my role as the Minister for Sport and Recreation overnight I signed up with dozens of other like-minded countries to a statement committing us to supporting a ban on Russia hosting major sporting events and supporting a ban on Russian athletes being involved in major sporting events. That's an example of each and every one of us having the ability to come together with like-minded nations to send the clearest of messages to Vladimir Putin and the Russian regime that he needs to stop what he is doing and move towards diplomacy and negotiation. He however is not listening to that for now and that's why measures such as those contained in the bill that we're debating tonight are so important. Others have outlined what the bill essentially does but giving us a framework where sanctions can stop or restrict people or companies from travelling to or from New Zealand moving assets to New Zealand—and this is an issue that could have arisen with the way in which other countries were putting in place sanctions regimes. Had we not done this we did run the risk that we could see a movement of assets to a place like New Zealand. This will stop that from happening but will also make sure that there are limitations in place on using assets that are already here. This is the freeze not seize" approach to the management of how we do these sanctions but the idea that we can freeze assets is an important one. Then as Mr Brownlee has pointed out services like banks loans legal services—this is where we can really have an impact on the economic power that sits behind Vladimir Putin on whom he relies to have his power. So having that combination of areas in which we can make regulation and undertake this work—it is incredibly important to be able to do that. There are practical things. We can stop superyachts and planes and other ships from entering New Zealand's water or air spaces and we can make sure that New Zealand is not a place where assets can be safeguarded from other countries' sanctions as I've already mentioned. There are a number of offences created here as well as a civil enforcement mechanism. We want to use laws like the Immigration Act and like the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act to make sure that we control any attempts for the banking system in New Zealand to be used in such a way that it goes against the whole international community's condemnation. I do want to acknowledge Mr Brownlee for the work that he's done in this space and for the way in which he has championed these issues. In the interests of accuracy 83 percent is the total of the bill that—from Mr Sachdeva who we all agree is a great journalist. Twenty-eight percent of the material is identical 41 percent has minor changes and 12.3 percent is paraphrased adding to 83 percent. Hon Gerry Brownlee: The balance was just a font change. Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: That's right—that's right. So just in the interests of accuracy it's very important for the Minister of Finance to be able to add those things all together to make them reach 83 percent. But in all seriousness I do want to thank Mr Brownlee for his work here. He has raised the issue here and obviously in previous debate about the question of a wider autonomous sanctions regime and I do want to say that this opportunity we have now to have this targeted regime is important but the conversation does need to go on about the way in which New Zealand is able to play its part in sanctions. We have proudly—and this is Governments of all stripes—looked towards multilateral sanctions to be in lock step with the international community but that runs headlong into another longstanding multiparty piece of foreign policy and that is our opposition to the veto at the Security Council. I can't quite remember the exact quote but it was from Peter Fraser when he was at the San Francisco conference in 1948. He talked about: imagine having a fire brigade who had all of the fire engines and all of the water but one member of the brigade could prevent the engine from going to the fire and that is the situation we have with the UN Security Council and the veto. It is a ridiculous situation heightened all the more as Mr Brownlee pointed out just now by the fact that this is one of the members of the Security Council who has undertaken this invasion that is a flagrant breach of international law. So in the absence of always being able to rely on multilateral sanctions that does beg the question of autonomous sanctions. But it is important that New Zealand makes its own decisions about that and that we create if we choose to a law in that way that is very much cognisant of our circumstances and our place in the world and the role that we play in upholding our independent foreign policy. So I think it's an issue worthy of debate but I don't think it would be the right decision today to try to put in place a wide-scale autonomous sanctions regime without having done the rest of that work. Therefore I think the bill that we have in front of us today is exactly the right piece of legislation for this situation. I want to thank all members of the House for their work in getting us to this point and I commend the bill to the House."