Radhakrishnan PriyancaPRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise to make a contribution at this first reading of the Rates Rebate (Statutory Declarations) Amendment Bill and I do so with pleasure because this is ultimately a bill that is about fairness and access and efficiency and really about choice as well. This is a bill that attempts to make the application process for rates rebates a little bit more accessible to those who need a rates rebate in the first place. It also aims to increase the efficiency of the application process. So currently the way that the process is set out under the Rates Rebate Act of 1973 as the honourable Ian McKelvie has pointed out means that applicants have to make a statutory declaration. This is problematic for a few reasons. Firstly it means that they have to actually be present at council offices and to meet with people who are actually authorised to allow them to make a statutory declaration. So I mean to me this is what this Parliament is here for. This is what Government is here for. It's to make things a little bit easier for people who need it and this bill will make it easier specifically for those who have a physical mobility issue or other impairments that mean that it makes it difficult for them to appear in person at a council or in front of an authorised person to make that statutory declaration.We also know that for many who live in rural communities this is a little bit difficult for them to actually get to councils where they can make a stat declaration. Finally we are also talking about a group of people who are on low incomes and therefore need the rates rebate in the first place because their rates are high and so to add travel costs to the application process—which means not only do they have to take the time and make the effort to travel to a place to make this declaration but they also actually have to pay to be able to do so. This bill although it's a seemingly minor tweak will actually make life easier for people and that I thought is what we're here to do. So it is actually quite disappointing that exactly one week out from when we celebrate the International Day of Older Persons on 1 October the Opposition is not supporting a bill that will actually make it easier for those very people largely those who are on superannuation to be able to access what is rightfully theirs. As the Opposition has also mentioned the fact that perhaps we should abolish the scheme in its entirety I thought at this point just to note that the Rates Rebate Scheme goes back a long way. It goes back to the 1970s when Norman Kirk was the Prime Minister and his focus was on getting good things done to those who need it most. He acknowledged that people who were paying off a mortgage were often struggling to do so and that they spent a significant portion of their income paying off their mortgage in order to be able to own their house but every quarter they were slapped with a rates bill that was a challenge for them especially those who were earning low incomes but were paying high rates. I just want to remind the House where this comes from when there's discussion from members opposite about abolishing it. This is there for a reason. It's not just a handout. It's actually there to make life easier for people who are struggling to be able to afford to live. So let's just remind ourselves of that and also of the fact that over the time that Labour was in Opposition from 1972 to 1975 the scheme started to be run down and also the amount that people could earn wasn't updated the amount that they were paying in rates wasn't updated and so the number of people who qualified for the Rates Rebate Scheme fell off and it was just down to a handful of people who could actually afford it. I want to also just very quickly pay tribute to my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson who then took this further because when she was back in Helen Clark's Government the Minister for Senior Citizens she noticed that so many who were dependent on superannuation couldn't afford to pay their rents. So some of those tweaks were done then in terms of updating the amount that people could earn and rates and so on. She also noticed that there was a proliferation of retirement villages—DEPUTY SPEAKER: I should have stopped this earlier but we are actually focusing on this bill.PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: Yeah no. I'll come to that. I just wanted to place it in context in terms of—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah I understand that but we are focused on this bill first reading.PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: Sure. So I will move on to my next point Madam Speaker—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Good.PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: —which is that in addition to the fact that it helps those who can't physically be there to make a statutory declaration it also provides choice. It provides options so that it can be done online and there's no reason that all applicants should have to be physically present. It doesn't take away the choice for those who choose to be but it gives others an alternative as well. The other point that I want to make is that it reduces the administrative costs to local authorities. As we know there are certain authorities that have to make home visits to those who can't physically travel or perhaps can't afford to travel to councils to make the statutory declaration and that is a burden on councils that is unnecessary. What this bill does is to do away with that unnecessary burden. It also improves the efficiency of processing applications because in as far as there was the requirement—well there's still a requirement—for people to be physically present and make a statutory declaration it has meant that councils are then prevented from using technologies that are increasingly available to us to improve the efficiency of processing applications. So the tweak that this bill will make when it's passed into law means that it makes things much more efficient for local councils as well because it gives them that option of processing online applications alongside a paper-based one. People listening to this might think that removing this requirement might make the process less secure. But actually it doesn't because currently status quo when somebody goes to make a statutory declaration authorised witnesses aren't actually required to verify whether the information given in that statutory declaration is actually true or whether it's an offence for applicants to provide false or misleading information. But in fact the penalties are already quite high for those who choose to provide false or misleading information. So the risk of this process being somehow less secure because of the removal of the statutory declaration requirement is actually not true. So just to summarise I guess this also sits alongside an increase in the rates rebate that was made slightly earlier this year which keeps up with the cost of living and that goes to the heart of what this bill does again which is to make sure that those who are eligible for the Rates Rebate Scheme are able to access it in a way that is easier for them and it actually makes the process much more efficient as well for all those involved. I just wanted to quickly point out—and it was actually just mentioned earlier that the Hon Ruth Dyson had made a change to do with rates rebates and retirement villages. This week actually marks the end of the first year of when that change came into place: 4275 applications were received by 44 councils across New Zealand which has seen a total of $2.5 million—Hon Peeni Henare: How much?PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: —$2.5 million—that has actually been given back to residents who were eligible for this. That's what we're here to do to make sure that everyone who is eligible for a rebate like this is able to access it in a way that they choose to access it and in a way that makes it easy for them to be able to do so. I coincidentally met with John Collins who's the executive director of the Retirement Villages Association just this afternoon when he gave me all this information and he told me that that tweak that the Hon Ruth Dyson made has made such a substantial impact on the lives of those who otherwise would have been struggling. So while this seems to be a bill that does something really quite minor I would argue that it's a bill that makes a substantive change to the lives of some of our older citizens who have been struggling. So I commend this bill to the House.