Radhakrishnan PriyancaPRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I too just want to begin by thanking the member Melissa Lee for bringing this bill to the House and as the Minister said in his speech as well I acknowledge that the member's heart is in the right place. However this is a slightly murky bill if I may put it that way because it kind of conflates two completely separate issues and I'll just provide a little bit of context before I make the points that I'm about to make.Basically what this bill the Accident Compensation (Recent Migrants and Returning New Zealanders) Amendment Bill does is it affects two separate Government schemes one being the ACC weekly compensation scheme or that particular part of the ACC compensations. ACC of course provides financial compensation and support to pretty much everyone—citizens residents temporary visitors to New Zealand—who has suffered personal injuries through no fault of their own. Let's park that there for a second. So that's the ACC scheme. You get the weekly compensations if you've been in say an accident that has rendered you incapacitated and you can't work—you've been working full-time and you can't do so anymore. The ACC weekly compensation scheme then provides you compensation for the loss of income and that's basically what that scheme is about.Now New Zealand super is completely separate. You're eligible for New Zealand super obviously if you're aged 65 or over if you're a legal resident of New Zealand and if you've lived in New Zealand for 10 years since the age of 20 with five of those years being in New Zealand since you turned 50. So those are basically the eligibility requirements for NZ super. It's a universal Government pension scheme meant to provide for you as it were to support your retirement. So two completely different things: one about accident and loss of income the other about supporting retirement in your twilight years. That's what we're talking about.What this bill does is change the eligibility for super for a certain group of people. It's actually quite a colour-blind policy or amendment if I could call it that because it's not specifically just about migrants; it's about returning New Zealanders as well and I acknowledge that. However what it does is—and let me just give you a quick scenario so that people who may be watching from home understand this a little bit better. Now if I'm a migrant and say I come to New Zealand when I am 40 years old I've got a job—full-time employment I'm contributing to New Zealand's economy society in fine ways. I work for about 20 years I suffer that horrible accident and I can't work anymore. I'm 60 years old and I get weekly compensations if I'm eligible and I meet the other criteria. I get that for five years till I turn 65 at which point I transition into New Zealand super. That's one scenario.The other scenario: same migrant comes to New Zealand when he or she is 60 years old—fine citizen or resident or person resident in New Zealand. He or she works and contributes for a year has that same accident is incapacitated gets weekly compensation just till they are 65—so for four years basically—at which point I take your point they're not compensated through accident compensation.But the point of this is that we're not meant to be transitioning from the weekly compensation straight into super; that's not the point of the two different schemes. It's actually about the retirement age. The age of 65 is a bit of a proxy for a retirement age from the point of view that at 65 is generally when people stop working and so it's rational. It's a rational conclusion and it's logical that you would not then be compensated for loss of income past 65 because under other circumstances you actually wouldn't have been working past 65. So it's not an automatic transition. The New Zealand super is not a social safety net. It's actually two different things that this bill conflates in my view.Also I've got to say that it doesn't take into account the fact that if in the second scenario I'd moved to New Zealand when I was 60 chances are I'd be contributing to an overseas pension scheme that I would still be getting money from. So this bill doesn't take that into account.I've got to say in closing that the Minister stole my thunder a little bit because the only category that would have been affected by this is the parent category those that came here as parents of their dependent children and that was closed by the former Government. Thank you.