Bidois DanSOCIAL ASSISTANCE (RESIDENCY QUALIFICATION) LEGISLATION BILLIn CommitteePart 1 Amendments to New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Act 2001DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): Madam Chair it's a pleasure to take a call this evening on the Social Assistance (Residency Qualification) Legislation Bill. It will be just a brief call today but I want to explain our rationale on the National Party side for supporting this bill through its current stage through to its eventual passing later on. This is a very important bill. The purpose of this bill is pretty clear. It's first and foremost about flexibility. It's also about fairness and it's about giving locals who live in the Realm who are New Zealand citizens the opportunity to go back and contribute to their local economies and at the same time fulfil the requirements to access their superannuation.I just wanted to describe a little bit about the bill—I mean certainly why I support it. Essentially it allows any person from the Realm—that is from Niue Tokelau or the Cook Islands—to live here and contribute to New Zealand's economy and then after they turn 50 as long as they complete five years in the Realm of where they come from—they can move to the Cook Islands Niue or Tokelau—they will essentially qualify for the New Zealand superannuation or veterans pension. I believe that's a really important step to make. Of course as the Minister in the chair Carmel Sepuloni will know our relationship with these countries is very strong and it goes back a long way in terms of our history our economic relationship in terms of remittances and also our political relationship as well. I think that this bill is essentially really important to enable people from the Realm to get their superannuation entitlements and at the same time go back to their country and contribute to their local economy.Just going through the bill since we are in the committee stage looking at the amendments in Part 1—I'm certainly very supportive of those clauses. In terms of what the policy problem is that I see we are trying to solve essentially it is giving people the opportunity to fulfil their 10-year residency requirement—plus five over 50 as we know—and also allowing them the opportunity to go back to their countries from the Realm and to contribute to the local economy and also fulfil their requirements for the New Zealand superannuation or veterans pension.We were on the select committee as part of this process and we heard a total of seven submissions. Seven of those were written and two of them were submitted orally. Essentially there were three arguments that were made around the bill that would prevent this bill from going forward. I just want to highlight them. I don't agree with them but I want to outline the issues that were raised in the submissions and why I don't think we need to address them in this instance.Firstly there was an issue from one of the submitters that this bill essentially discriminates. What I want to assure the person who made the submission is that this bill is open to any overseas person that comes to New Zealand that can fulfil the requirements to get their pension and then also wants to move to any of the Islands in the Realm—whether it be Tokelau the Cook Islands or Niue. They are able to move to those islands and also fulfil the residency requirements.There was also an issue that was raised in the select committee process around the fact that this might actually harm some of the economic contribution to these nations. I would argue that it actually does the opposite. Through giving people the opportunity to work in these countries to go back to these countries and also to fulfil the requirements of the pension it also essentially is going to be a contributor to that.