Mark Ron: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMark Ron: General Debate[Sitting date: 25 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1911. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RON MARK (NZ First): Well I guess today’s paper pretty much sums it up if you look at the front page of the Dominion Post. On the right-hand side you have photographs and a story about the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS): “ISIS fight: Key fired up”—or not apparently; and “Emphatic no for the super-city in voter poll”. I want to speak briefly about both these issues. I think probably the one part of the front page of the Dominion Post that I would like the members of the Government to focus on is the part here with United States journalist Steven Sotloff standing beside—that is “Jihadi John” is it not?Hon Member: Kneeling beside.RON MARK: Kneeling beside “Jihadi John”. The question that I have for this Government is: what is your contingency plan? If one of our soldiers ends up in an orange jumpsuit beside “Jihadi John” what is your plan? Will you pay the ransom will you send in the SAS or will you stand by and allow one of our soldiers to be beheaded? That is the real question and I have not heard anything from this Government. And I put it to this Government: before the troops go—Hon Paul Goldsmith: It could happen tomorrow you great goof.RON MARK: Do not make light of it silly Mr—what is your name?Barbara Stewart: Goldsmith.RON MARK: Goldsmith. Do not make light of this. See the thing I know about people in Parliament—and I used to say this to Keith Locke—is that most often the people who have the loudest voices when it comes to deploying people into theatres of war are those who have never worn a uniform and never want to. And very very often sadly you find that they do not allow their sons or daughters to go either. So button it Mr Goldsmith—button it. You have no place commenting on this because quite frankly you do not know what you are sending troops to.The other point I want to talk about is the Local Government Commission and the super-city amalgamation. As the Mayor of Carterton I tried to have conversations with various Government Ministers and a range of people—indeed yourself Mr Speaker when you were the Minister of Local Government—and I tried to impress upon people what was going to happen. I know this Government passed legislation to make it easier to force amalgamations and it has relied on the Local Government Commission to put together the necessary papers to effect that. That is the aspiration. We know that. But what we have right now is two things: an incompetent Local Government Commission—and I did ask the Minister of Local Government whether she had confidence in it. She said yes. The trouble is that since the commission’s Wellington proposal has been released it has had to make three corrections of fact and there is still one major glaring error of fact in its proposal where it has estimated the costs of merging the Wairarapa councils’ IT systems into one at $25 million—wrong. The three Wairarapa councils have been doing that work for the last 5 years and had the commission bothered to pick up the phone and ring one of the chief executive officers over there it would have been told that the cost was probably about $1.5 million to polish it off—$1.5 million not $25 million. I am sorry but the Local Government Commission reeks of incompetence.And now we have an amazing statement a ruling coming out of the Broadcasting Standards Authority which has found that the Greater Wellington Regional Council and Fran Wilde have lied—lied—in their marketing propaganda to the people of the Greater Wellington region. I have got to hand it to Stephen Franks who has taken Fran Wilde and the Greater Wellington Regional Council to task and the councillors of the Greater Wellington Regional Council and is asking them as honest members of the council: “How do you feel about this? Will you seek an inquiry into the Greater Wellington Regional Council’s propaganda?”. I stand here ready to assist this Government to a sensible solution for the Wairarapa which is a unitary authority and it would help if the local member stood up for his people as well. But we are not going to lie down and let this Government and the Local Government Commission allow the people of the Wairarapa to be forced into a Wellington super-city when 85 percent of them do not want it.