Upston LouiseHon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you Madam Speaker. I can assure you that I won't be bringing the Bee Gees into my contribution in the New Zealand Superannuation and Veteran's Pension Legislation Amendment Bill for the third reading. I did see Madam Speaker your wry smile and I thought I shall stay away from such a topic." I'm not so bold as my colleague Chris Penk.This is a piece of legislation obviously that the National Party is supporting. It's really important with the fact that we have more of our seniors who are living longer and they have made a significant contribution through employment and through family and volunteer roles over their lifetime and we want to make sure that they are well supported in their golden years.So the relationship status is relevant in terms of eligibility for the New Zealand Superannuation and veteran's pension in three ways which I'll just touch on. The first is what they receive is dependent on their relationship status: if they're single and what their living arrangements are. For a qualifying New Zealand Superannuation or veteran's pension recipient they can choose to include their partner who doesn't qualify and that might be that they don't qualify based on their age or their current residency status in their New Zealand Superannuation or veteran's pension and that would be subject to an income test. Then if one partner's entitlement is to a Government-administered overseas pension that exceeds their entitlement to a benefit or pension the excess is deducted from the entitlement of the other partner and this is commonly referred to as the spousal deduction.As my colleague Chris Penk said members of Parliament often get letters of complaint about the spousal deduction and in the select committee process there was a resounding support of that change from submitters. So it is always encouraging for those who make a submission to the legislation that we pay attention to what they say. And it's really important in terms of this change that the majority of the submitters did actually support it. On the other hand the non-qualifying partners provision wasn't quite so overwhelmingly supported.The reality is that we need to take every opportunity to modernise and simplify our legislation and these are just a couple of examples where it can be quite complicated. This is making it fairer and it's also making it simpler. But for us in the National Party one of the things that is really important is that the New Zealand Superannuation scheme is sustainable and it's for that reason that we have campaigned and will continue to campaign on progressively increasing the age of entitlement from 65 to 67. It's not starting for a few years—2037—so there's plenty of time for people to get prepared for that.The sustainability is really important. If we look at what's happening in New Zealand at the moment—the impacts of COVID—there'll be significant debt that's taken on by the Government and that'll be for future generations to pay off. So it is really important on this side of the House that we have a New Zealand Superannuation scheme that is sustainable. We were disappointed that Jacinda Ardern had the opportunity to also stick with their former policy of lifting the age of entitlement but backed off it. We would have preferred that we could have had a situation across the Parliament where there was general agreement about making the New Zealand Superannuation scheme more sustainable for generations to come.So the other speakers have covered the detail of this bill. It is supported by the National Party and I commend the bill to the House."