Copeland Gordon: New Zealand Superannuation and Veterans’ Pensions (Entitlements of Spouses and Partners of People in Long-term Residential Care and Remedial Matters) Bill — First Reading 
Copeland Gordon: New Zealand Superannuation and Veterans’ Pensions (Entitlements of Spouses and Partners of People in Long-term Residential Care and Remedial Matters) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:629;Page:1639] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future to take a brief call on the New Zealand Superannuation and Veterans’ Pensions (Entitlements of Spouses and Partners of People in Long-term Residential Care and Remedial Matters) Bill. I must say that it is a pleasure in this House sometimes to follow members of the Maori Party and the previous speech given by the honourable Tariana Turia was one example of a very thoughtful well-constructed and very good contribution to the debate on this bill. When she talked about the importance of ethnicity in terms of the statistical—and if one likes the genetic—characteristics of ethnicity I was reminded of the little campaign that seems to be run by some members of the National Party at the moment that seeks to confuse New Zealanders about the difference between ethnicity and nationality. For example this morning at the Finance and Expenditure Committee the member Craig Foss wanted to ask the Secretary to the Treasury why he did not just regard all the people working for Treasury as New Zealanders rather than worry about their ethnic origins. 
It is important to say that ethnicity talks about a person’s DNA and gene pool origin. In my case that happens to be Caucasian and within Caucasian is the subset of Scottish English and Irish. It is a completely different question from nationality. The other difference between the two is that we are born with our ethnicity. It is not something we choose and it is not something we can change whereas our nationality is something we can change. Everybody who is born in this country is a New Zealander; everybody who has a New Zealand passport is a New Zealander but I could choose tomorrow to go and live in Australia and I could start to call myself an Australian. Or people could come as many have from places like Taiwan to live in New Zealand and they now consider themselves to be New Zealanders. So that is just a little aside for those in the National Party who have confused minds about the difference between the two terms. 
I come to the bill. United Future supports very strongly the provisions of this bill. We believe that it is entirely fair and reasonable when a spouse or a partner goes into full-time residential care that the rate for the partner who continues to live in the community should then become the single person’s rate. That is eminently fair and it addresses a situation that has probably been blatantly unfair for quite some time. We also support the provision of the bill that simplifies the rules for living alone payments so that it is based on a person’s actual living arrangements. Again we are a common-sense party and this is a common-sense provision when one thinks about it. There is a difference in the rates for single and married couples because of the difference in living costs. The old saying that two can live together cheaper than one is true when it comes to sharing all kinds of things from cars to packets of Weet-Bix. One can achieve some economy if one is part of a married couple or a couple living in a partnership as compared with a person who is on his or her own. That is exactly what the scheme does and that is the distinction we should ensure is made. I know from correspondence I have had from people that there has been some confusion around that point and it is good to see it clarified. 
We strongly support the extension of the voluntary work provisions for people who are doing voluntary work overseas from 52 weeks to 156 weeks. I am constantly amazed at the number of New Zealanders who in their retirement years choose to undertake fantastic voluntary work overseas. I would like to ask the select committee that will consider this bill to look carefully at the way in which that work is defined. In my view it should be defined in a way that includes in an unambiguous manner people who take short 1 to 3-year terms overseas as missionaries. Some people like to argue that they are in the business of simply—if one likes—winning converts to their particular faith be it Christian Muslim Hindu or whatever. But speaking for the many many missionary organisations that I know about the reality is that day in day out they give considerable humanitarian support to people particularly in Third World countries in every range of charity one could imagine. By the way the word “charity” happens to mean love for one’s fellow man They express that through medical help educational help translation help—the list goes on and on. All of that is part of the day-by-day work done by many of those people in missionary organisations. It is true that their motivation is based on faith but that should not obscure the reality of the good that they do in those countries. I think that if an objective account were ever taken of New Zealand’s history it would be true to say that the early missionaries in this country also made a significant contribution—sometimes controversial but overall extremely positive. 
It is also right that we align the veterans pension with the adjustments we are making to New Zealand superannuation. United Future strongly supports the confidence and supply agreement between Labour and New Zealand First that New Zealand superannuation will move to 66 percent of the ordinary-time weekly earnings as from 1 April 2006. Indeed our own party’s policy would have been a bit more generous than that. We wanted to move the data to a prospective base rather than a retrospective base. At the moment those calculations are done on 1 April but are based on the figures for the previous 31 December. When one works that through the next 12 months one finds that superannuitants are always 9 months behind the eight ball because this new rate applies from 1 April until 31 March in the next year but is still based on 31 December in the year before. I have done the sums and that is the way it works out on average. One is always 9 months behind. Under our formula we would have gone to more than 66 percent but this at least is a good step in the right direction. I am happy to signal our strong support for this bill on that basis.