Leary IngridINGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): I rise in support of the fair residency bill which is otherwise known as the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income (Fair Residency) Amendment Bill. What this bill does is it amends section 8 of the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Act 2001. That Act is supervised by the Ministry of Social Development and Treasury. Section 8 in particular that this bill proposes to amend is supervised by the Ministry of Social Development. When this bill goes through the proposed start is for July 2022 in order to allow the ministry to be able to get the systems in place to administer it properly.I'd like to talk about the history of this member's bill and a bit of a discussion about fairness—because I note that Andrew Bayly spoke a lot about the figures but actually this is a bill about fairness as are so many of the bills that come from this side of the House. I'd also like to talk about the select committee process how we looked at fairness and also the impact on the ethnic communities—and in particular the refugee community—because in my Taieri electorate we have many refugees whom this bill could have impacted on and so I'm really pleased with the process that happened in order to safeguard their interests.Finally I'd just like to make a comment about the select committee process with the Finance and Expenditure Committee because I think as has been alluded to by Mr Woodhouse the bill did need a little bit of reworking and this is an example of a select committee process that has worked really well. So just commending Mr Bayly for taking on the bill—but actually it was originally in the name of Mark Patterson and came into the House in 2018. Of course as has been said this evening Mark Patterson was a New Zealand First MP—in fact a very good MP based in Lawrence in my electorate. It wasn't previously in my electorate; it is now. We got to know Mr Patterson really well when we were out campaigning and what I saw was that he did a great job even though he was a list MP as being something of an electorate MP. So I would like to wish him well in his new role as the president of Federated Farmers in Otago. The reason I bring this up is because when I first joined the select committee I phoned Mark Patterson to find out the history of the bill to get a bit of context and he was extremely helpful. So I know that in his role with Federated Farmers that relationship will continue—even though of course our politics are very very different. As Mr Woodhouse alluded to the bill did come into the House as a bit of a blunt tool and it needed quite a few changes. I think the starting point is really to look at the name of the bill. It talks about fair" and it talks about "residency". If we look at what that means we really need to look at what is fair for those people who have worked all their life here in New Zealand and contributed to the superannuation scheme what is fair for them; also what is fair for those who come in a later stage or who may contribute in other ways such as looking after grandchildren; and what is fair for people who perhaps have worked for a while in New Zealand have left New Zealand and contributed to overseas economies and then come back later in life. These are all real questions and real situations and scenarios thrown up by the way that the legislation currently stands because currently to qualify for New Zealand super you need to be a citizen or a resident you need to be 65 or over and you need to be over the age of 20 and then you can qualify after 10 years of residency—or after five years if you are over the age of 50. The problem that throws up is for example a migrant who is in New Zealand for 10 years and is able to get full superannuation—even though they may not really have contributed to this economy—or a New Zealand citizen who has left New Zealand at the age of 25 and has returned at the age of 60 and has worked for 35 years somewhere else overseas and contributed to another economy. What is fair in that situation?As has been pointed out we have an ageing population as well so that's put pressure on the system. It's really called into question the integrity of the superannuation system. So we do need to do something in order to make it sustainable.What we don't want to do is to raise the level of eligibility because that simply would not be fair. It has been done in Australia up to the age of 67. Todd Muller—several National Party leaders ago—suggested he was going to do that. But if you look at the statistics about life expectancy for New Zealanders the overall life expectancy for men in New Zealand is 80 and for women is 83.5. When you break that down though Māori men can be expected to live to 73; Pasifika men 75.5; Asian men 85; and so on. So if you look at the differential 85 years for an Asian man compared to 73 years average for a Māori man how could it be fair to then raise the levels when already there is a benchmark that cuts across that has them on different playing fields to start with?Just referring to those average ages—I think Greg O'Connor my colleague mentioned the ageing population—I was down in Kaitangata over the weekend celebrating a dedication to the Kaitangata cemetery where actually New Zealand's worst mining disaster happened many years ago. They've put up these incredible billboards that tell the history of Kai and include the name of many of the victims there. Not only were there young men killed in that mining accident but also people who just died from ordinary life circumstances and it really struck me how young many of those people were when they passed away. So really it is a real issue for us that we have an ageing population. It's a good issue to have but we need to get our superannuation correct to deal with that.When we look at the amount of money that we will be able to save it's about $162 million per year by the year 2041-2042. But really as I said before this bill is about fairness. It allows people to phase in their planning and it avoids the so-called cliff edges which is when somebody reaches an age and they suddenly face a very different future in terms of their superannuation. As has been alluded to by my colleagues the phasing in will make that be easier to plan for.We had 362 submissions and 15 oral submissions and most were around hardship most were around the cliff edges and actually the tone of those submissions would suggest that most people would have been satisfied if there was a more graduated approach to the changes to super. I will note contrary to what people may believe around migrants accessing superannuation the vast majority of those accessing superannuation in New Zealand actually come from the UK—so that's about 86000 people. If you look at the next largest group that's China at 12000. I'm really pleased that we have made exceptions for the refugee community as I mentioned but also we have looked at the graduation and the unfair impact on some ethnic minorities even though they are the smaller group and that is because they tend to arrive in New Zealand when they're older and they often don't have social security treaties like the UK people do. So even though they are the smaller group of people affected by our superannuation and by the changes should we have those cliff edges actually the impact on them would be very unfair. In fact the words used by many of those submitters were "unfair" "unreasonable" and "inhumane". I'd just like to commend them actually for the submissions they made because some of them came from much older people for whom English was clearly a second language and it was great to see that they had made the effort to put forward their views and also to remind us of the really important work that some of them do as grandparents looking after grandchildren so that their children can contribute very ably to this economy. I'm reminded of Marilyn Waring's work around Counting for Nothing and the fact that we need to be counting unpaid work when we look at issues of fairness and equity.In my final comments I'd just like to really say this was a fantastic select committee process to be on. I learnt firsthand what happens when there's good advice from the officials and when there's collegiality. We were able to consider fairness and come up with a changed regime but one that still reached a consensus when it came to agreeing on what was fairness what was residency and a system that is going to work into the future. I commend it to the House.Sitting suspended from 5.59 p.m. to 7 p.m."