O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): I must congratulate that previous speaker Jan Logie. She does something that no political leader can do. She actually unites the ACT Party and National in their absolute emotion against her speeches. So well done that member. You've achieved much.This is a piece of legislation that if you can imagine there'll be a farmer standing in Lawrence at the moment probably a docking tool in one hand an old 1950s transistor in the other listening to this debate—Mark Patterson who actually introduced this bill to the House saw it through in a fairly raw form which the erudite Mr Bayly with the help of the hard-working Finance and Expenditure Committee has turned into quite a workable piece of legislation. I think history will show that this legislation has played its part in ensuring that our superannuation or pension or just acknowledgment of the need to look after our older people has actually now matured if you like as it needed to continue to do. The first pension in New Zealand was a world first in the late 1890s—1898—and it was part of Richard John Seddon's many reforms that have shaped New Zealand today. It came in about the same time as women's votes land reform of course which broke up the estates and votes for women. Sorry I've already mentioned that twice in this House.But it is important that all these things do actually continue to evolve and certainly with this legislation—and having been on the select committee having listened to some very well-informed submitters people who are coming at things from angles that certainly as a select committee we wouldn't have probably been able to imagine ourselves—we have ended up I think with a piece of legislation which will set us up well for the future. Because against this backdrop we've got to actually have a look at where our average life expectancy is: 81.71 years currently which shows that there is likely to be—in fact I understand that it's an average of 20 years because being an average doesn't take into account those that never got the pension in the first place. So people will be on the pension for 20 years and of course as we have an ageing population that is something that we as current politicians and current lawmakers do have to take into account in any legislation that we pass.It's interesting; in terms of the dates when this legislation first came in I think someone previously mentioned it was to be a fairly blunt introduction that would have seen a lot of people their plans for superannuation through no fault of their own left waiting up to 20 years until they got the pension. You can imagine that for someone who arrived from somewhere like South Africa somewhere like Sri Lanka and many other places—China—actually part of their planning was that New Zealand superannuation would be payable to them. So take that out of the equation for 20 years—quite rightly we heard some quite emotional people at select committee. That really was going to impact the latter years of their life.As a result of that fine-tuning with the help of the officials and I have to say around the select committee some very collegial work we were actually able to settle on some dates that I think do make sense. Right now the key date of course is going to be 1 July 1959. If you were born before 1959 you will not be impacted. Of course then for subsequent dates going forward that means of course that you'll be hitting 65 in the next couple of years. As someone who is actually in that age group—in fact I might say I remember reading some Swedish research just recently that said those of us born between 1957 and 1961 were actually the lucky generation that we avoided the post-war stringencies. We actually were on the right side of the 1960s and the revolutions there. We actually bought our houses at the right time. So this actually ironically won't affect me of course having spent my working life in New Zealand but certainly being part of a generation that increasingly was able to work around the world was more mobile in many ways as air travel increased it is a generation that will actually benefit from this.The important thing also about this legislation is that it does allow people now to plan. So it means that people who are arriving with the exception of refugees I might say—and of course that was another thing that came out of the select committee work; that refugees as previous speakers have pointed out had no choice as to when and where they would arrive but they were likely to arrive here—that they wouldn't be impacted. So this would actually take into account that they hadn't had the chance to plan—that the trauma in their previous existences in the countries they lived in wasn't going to continue. So that was again a very humanitarian part of this legislation I think.The other thing was in relation to the Realm countries. I was also part of some legislation passed in the last term here where we did allow people from the Realm countries to spend that last five years qualifying—of course it's still a requirement to have worked in New Zealand but also post-50 to qualify for this you still needed to have been in New Zealand for five years post-50. Well of course that meant that people post-50 who had spent their formative years in New Zealand building businesses went back to one of the Realm countries—it meant that they were then obliged to usually sell that business walk away from that business and come back here for five years to make sure they were eligible for that pension. Of course that piece of legislation—I can't actually recall what the bill was—did enable them to spend that five years in the Realm countries and this of course is applicable as well.So I just think this is a very good piece of legislation. As I said before most importantly it does update it. It needs to be updated taking into account our increased age expectancy. It updates it accepting that we are a much more mobile world and that we will get workers we will get people who will choose to take up new professions take up new jobs move to countries at a later stage of their life.There was one submitter that did actually make quite a good point. It was one of our older Chinese submitters who was here on a parent category and they pointed out that when they had actually been in China before they came here on the parent category they had actually funded their child through the New Zealand education system at great cost. So they did point out that they had actually contributed to the New Zealand tax base or certainly to the New Zealand economy during their early stages anyway and that was something that really we hadn't taken into account.One of the other submitters was actually someone who wanted it to be able to be taken into account that even though they may have spent their last 10 or 15 years working in a country offshore they were happy to come back and they hadn't spent that last five years in New Zealand—didn't qualify. It was out of scope. But it just did point out in these submissions that we have people living in all sorts of different circumstances. So it's very important that you go back to the basis the key point of this bill and any bill with superannuation. I go back to the 1898 Act where you had those older miners—you had people who'd come out here with nothing. They'd worked through their bodies were broken down and they actually literally were living on charity. So if you go back to 1898 when that was brought in—just actually what that would have meant to a lot of those people—and subsequently through the change it's been modified somewhat to where we are today with a universal basic pension. It just ensures that New Zealand—we are unique in the world and it's important we say that. They're words that we can slip off our tongue without us really fully understanding what it really means. It means that actually we do look after ourselves. When we go to countries overseas and see what happens if you do fall if you don't make provision or something goes wrong you do end up on the scrap heap. New Zealand is a country that I'm very proud to be part of and it's good to see that we have had cross-party support to make sure that there's not a scrap heap here that we will ensure that we look after all comers. So I have no hesitation in commending this bill to the House.