Barry MaggieHon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Thank you Madam Chair Williams. To the Minister who's just resumed his seat Stuart Nash I would make a couple of points. In response to the Hon Jacqui Dean's points around the fact that heat in the summer is as debilitating to seniors as cold is in the winter he countered with the idea that it costs more to heat your water in the winter to have your showers. Might I point out that superannuitants are not fond of being malodorous. Through the summer months they will also want to keep clean. They will also need to have their water heated unless you're suggesting that people over the age of 65 deserve only cold showers—that that is all they deserve?I think that there are a number of issues that have been raised by this Minister that are a little bit frivolous. To his point around the idea that superannuitants just come back and go online: as the Minister for Seniors for the past three years I can tell you that many seniors are very resistant to the idea of going online and doing that sort of thing. The Minister needs to propose—and I'd be very interested in his response—what other mechanisms would exist for the expedient and convenient and accessible means of superannuitants communicating with the Government about the way that they choose to travel and the way that they choose to spend this untargeted poorly named payment.The idea that it is winter and it is energy has already been dispelled by some of my colleagues and the Johnny Clipboard" notion of people coming around to check on superannuitants who might tend to go away to get warm over the winter is also something that he hasn't countered—to my satisfaction at least.I could talk about Ophir which has recorded the highest temperatures and the lowest temperatures in New Zealand during a single year. These people have very particular difficulties and I know a lot of older people who live there who would feel that the Minister has—and in fact the Government has—been unfair to them with this package.I'd also like to talk though about some of the inequities in this not just the summer/winter thing but also about the people who do not live in their own homes. I wonder why there is not proposed within this the notion that long-term residential care—people who live in hospitals or rest homes—might be eligible for this. I guess the question is: do people who live in residential care not get cold in winter? Is that what we're expected to believe here?Hon Tracey Martin: They don't pay the power bill.Hon MAGGIE BARRY: Oh there's a chihuahua in the background again. It doesn't recognise that the noise in the plumbing that high-pitched squeak is inaudible in terms of its intelligibility. Mind you is it an intelligent comment anyway? Hard to tell but the incessant squeaker will be ignored by me as by all other members yet it does tend to persist.Eligibility for this payment under new section 61FG is really something that I would like the Minister to respond to. I think people receiving long-term residential care in either a hospital or a rest home—and these are people who are paid under the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000—ought to be eligible because they feel just the way we all feel whether they're in their own homes—Hon David Bennett: They're paying power bills.Hon MAGGIE BARRY: Yes indeed. The Hon David Bennett has pointed out that they are paying power bills through the expenses that they pay for their residential amounts. Why should they not get what others are getting? This is unfair. This is dividing up superannuitants into the ones who live in their own homes who get an advantage and those who will be disadvantaged because they live in residential facilities.In case the Minister is unaware—and I'm sure the Minister for Seniors is because she's unaware of many things to do with her newly gained portfolio—let me reassure these members who are woefully out of the picture when it comes through.Rt Hon David Carter: Even the SPCA would put this one down.Hon MAGGIE BARRY: That's a shocking comment that my colleague made. Shall I repeat it? No I'd better not.I think in terms of the way that superannuitants like to think they are not beneficiaries; they are people who get entitlements. They are entitled to get what they get whether they live in their own homes residential facilities or hospitals because they are all equal in the fact that they've paid their taxes. They are people who have given us the values that underpin this great country of ours and for the Minister for Seniors to demean them for this Minister to try and insist that really they don't have the same equality depending on where they live is I think a real equity issue. There is no equality in this.It's a "terms and conditions" sort of a winter energy payment really isn't it? That's what one of our colleagues was talking about this morning. Read the fine print superannuitants because it's very different according to where you live and what this Government in a very arbitrary fashion is going to be deeming you to be deserving of. They don't know very much at all. They need to learn fast. I will talk about an amendment later that also talks about equity."