Mapp Wayne: War Pensions Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
Mapp Wayne: War Pensions Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
[Volume:607;Page:4924] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (NZ National—North Shore) 
: 
 National is supporting this legislation and I imagine that every single party in the House will be supporting it. The bill rectifies some anomalies in the legislation which have been recognised by all parties. It recognises that increasingly in modern times veterans will be active in campaigns of often quite short duration—rather than those on the scale of wars like World War I or World War II—and in a whole series of events that we know well from our post-World War II history like the Korean or Vietnam wars. But on top of that there are vast numbers of specialised UN supervisory operations and many of those are extremely demanding. We in this House and in this country often do not fully recognise just how demanding service is for example on the Lebanese border. Having talked to a number of the people who worked there I know it is dangerous that people are at risk of serious injury and that soldiers sailors and others working there from other countries have been injured and even killed. 
This more modern approach recognises that it is no longer appropriate for the Government of the day to declare a particular category of service as qualifying for pensions. It is more important to examine each individual’s service history and ask whether he or she suffered disablement or injury in the course of service to New Zealand and recognise that. I welcome that approach. I have had—and I am sure many members of Parliament have had—submissions and letters from constituents who have had huge difficulty in getting not just the current Government but also the previous Government to recognise the nature of that service and recompense veterans properly for their injuries. With this change of administration and the provisions of the legislation in the House today I would like to think that those kinds of issues will be in the past and that it will be fundamentally easier for our service people. They have a demanding vocation—not just when shot and shell are being fired but in terms of the whole nature of the service itself. It taxes the body and mind in a way that probably no other vocation does. That is why we have to have special legislation and why we have to update that legislation in order to recognise the changed nature of armed conflict. 
I want to talk about a couple of broader issues. I note that our country handles these matters differently from other countries. For instance we essentially have two types of war pension. The first is a disablement pension that is available at whatever age a person is disabled. It tends to be quite a modest sum additional to other income. On top of that when veterans reach the statutory retirement age of 65 or more accurately the eligibility age for New Zealand superannuation there is an election. The veteran either takes New Zealand superannuation or the war pension. They are the same amount of money and personally I have always found that to be something of an anomaly. Certainly there is still the disablement pension or some limited entitlements as well but it seems to me that we have not properly recognised that a person in receipt of a war pension post-65 should really be getting a bit more than New Zealand superannuation. 
The argument in the past for good and proper reasons was that the country simply could not afford it. Certainly the number of veterans from World War I and World War II was such a huge percentage of the total population that I suspect the country felt it could not afford to provide say 150 percent and service was recognised in other ways—educational benefits in the 1950s and 1960s settlement on farms and in businesses and so forth. Both National and Labour Governments have done a great deal over the years to recognise that service—but that was then. All of those people are older now and almost exclusively retired. Yet we do not now financially recognise that service; we say it was recognised in the past. Knowing that veterans have been involved in dangerous service and given that the numbers who serve in our armed forces are so much smaller now as a percentage of our total population I think that one of the issues we will have to examine as a Parliament and as a Government is whether we as a community should recognise that maybe an additional payment beyond the level of superannuation is justified once those servicemen and servicewomen reach 65. 
I know that the Royal New Zealand Returned Services Association has raised that question with the Government. It has certainly done so with the Minister Mr Harry Duynhoven and no doubt talked with Minister George Hawkins. As I said I understand the reasons that such a payment was felt not to be financially possible in the past but I have to ask the Government whether that issue should not be looked at afresh. The nature of the service is different today and the numbers of citizens involved—male and female—is so much lower. The circumstances that led to the original legislation are different today. So whilst we have recognised an anomaly today—and that is an important thing and will be welcomed by veterans throughout New Zealand—we still need to look at that broader question. 
I know that there are big differences from time to time in this House about whether our nation should be involved in any particular conflict. I am not going to go into that because I do not think it is appropriate to do so in this speech. But I would go so far as to put on the record that there are those differences and that they are increasingly being understood. Indeed they were well-reflected in question time today. That is not the issue for the veterans. They do not make the decisions about where they should serve; those decisions are made by the people that they and the rest of New Zealanders elect. We should always remember that. They do not get to make the choice but in each and every case they serve our country valiantly and loyally. What we are doing today is recognising that service. 
The reason I have mentioned that is that just recently I was at the return of Her Majesty’s vessel  
Te Kaha 
 at Devonport. The families there had waited 8 months for their family members to return yet outside the gates there was a group of protestors. I thought: “Why are you doing this; why are you protesting against these service people?” It was not the service people’s decision although I am sure that they wanted to be involved. Fundamentally protests should be aimed at those who make the decisions. I would like to think that there is a greater maturity in civil society in that people understand the difference between those who serve their country on the directions that Governments elected from this House make and those who make the decisions. It is a hugely important distinction and I was extremely disappointed to see those protestors there that day.