Goff Phil: Veterans’ Support Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Veterans’ Support Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 22 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19320. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):Last month together with the Minister of Veterans’ Affairs I had the privilege of attending two ceremonies: the 63rd anniversary of the Battle of Crete and the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Monte Cassino. The true privilege of attending those two occasions was to talk to the several dozen veterans at each event; to talk to the men who had fought on Crete who had fought at Cassino and to be able to acknowledge to their faces our debt to that generation. Most of them are now at least 90—one or two of them had reached 100 years. As I sat at those commemoration ceremonies I considered the lucky generation that we in this House represent. We are the generation that did not have to follow in our fathers’ and our grandfathers’ footsteps and serve in great wars overseas.The story of my family is very similar to many families in this House. I was very much influenced by my grandmother. She lost her elder brother in 1917 in the Great War. Even more tragically she lost her youngest son my dad’s younger brother aged 19 in the Solomon Islands in 1944. I think of what that generation went through and I think of the debt that we owe to those people. So when we mark the centenary year of the start of the Great War in 1914 whatever we can do within reason for our veterans we should do. It is decent. It is common sense. It honours and respects them. Honour and respect can be in the words we say but more important it can be in the small gestures that we can make.I have not invented the Supplementary Order Paper that stands in my name but I am asking the Committee to support it. Supplementary Order Paper 441 does something very simple. In one clause it restores the lump-sum payment on death to all of those who are eligible for the veterans pension. It is a gesture. It is what the Law Commission asked for. That is the logic of it. The Law Commission did the hard yards. It consulted with thousands of New Zealanders. It took 2 years over its work. I do not condemn it for taking 2 years; it did it thoroughly. Nobody says that this group of people did their job other than properly and thoroughly and came up with considered recommendations. So when we reject a recommendation of the Law Commission surely there has to be a good reason for that.I have been participating in this debate for 3 hours. I have asked time and again for the National Party to put one speaker up—one speaker; just one speaker—and give us a reason why we should be rejecting the recommendation of the Law Commission and why we should be throwing this in the face of the New Zealand RSA and the veterans when they asked us for it. Surely we owe them an explanation as to why we are denying them it.I hear from the National members when they think that it is appropriate to take a call that it is the expense. Well I want to talk about the element of expense as it relates to veterans’ affairs of New Zealand. I have in my hand the written answers to the estimates questions for the Budget Vote Veterans’ Affairs for 2014-15. What do I find? Between 2011 and 2012 there was a cut of $8 million in expenditure on veterans’ services and payments. Between 2012 and 2013 there was another cut of $9 million. In 2013 and 2014 it was a cut of $7 million. This year the Budget represents a further reduction of $11 million. In each of those years the cut to Veterans Affairs New Zealand would by itself have paid for what the Law Commission is asking for. It is not asking you to invent new money; it is asking you to slow down the cuts that you are making in payments to veterans and services to veterans so that it can give those veterans whom we honour sincerely and gratefully the payment that the Law Commission asked for and the RSA pleaded for.The money was already there. Each and every year the National Government has been able to cut the payment to services for veterans by more than what we are asking for in my Supplementary Order Paper. Do not tell me that we cannot afford it. The evidence is there. You would just have to reduce the cuts that you have made each year for 5 years to Vote Veterans Affairs to pay for this. I know from talking to some of my colleagues on that side of the Committee that they would dearly like to support this Supplementary Order Paper. I am not going to name them; that is unfair. I know they would like to do that because it is the right thing to do and they recognise it is the right thing to do. I have talked to the Minister outside of the Chamber and said “For God’s sake let’s have a consensus here in this Committee so that we can do the right thing for our veterans.” I do not want the politics of this; I want to do the right thing for our veterans—what the Law Commission said we should do what the RSA and General Don McIver have asked for us to do what those veterans whom we meet every week or every month in our RSAs say is the decent thing to do.I have been round more RSAs than I would care to number and I deeply respect the service that those people have given us the last of the World War II veterans the Korean War veterans whom Melissa Lee spoke quite movingly about and our Viet Nam veterans whom we failed to honour when they returned from Viet Nam. Is it too much to ask this Committee to do the right thing by our veterans? It is affordable. It is justifiable. It has been recommended to this House by the body that we set up to review the Act. For heaven’s sake why will the National Government not do the right thing?I tell the Māori Party which has switched its vote to support a mean cut to the veterans to think again because every reason that Te Ururoa Flavell gave us was evidence that he had been duped in his discussions with the National Government. If the Māori Party goes down screaming at this election this will be yet one more example of why when the crunch point comes it has not been able to stand up for the rights of its own people. Why has the Māori Party sold out? Well Te Ururoa Flavell said that the Government said that it will not progress this bill unless the Māori Party does sell out. That is equivalent to blackmail. That is unacceptable. It is not acceptable to do that.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!Hon PHIL GOFF: This Opposition—Labour the Greens and New Zealand First—are facilitating the passage of this bill so it can pass before the rising of the 50th Parliament. We are doing the right thing by our veterans. We are simply asking reciprocally for the National Government to do the right thing by supporting this amendment. If each member on that side of the Chamber fails to support that amendment they are effectively saying that they do not put value on our veterans not because I am saying that that payment should be made but because the official inquiry that was set up to recommend to the Government made that recommendation and because the RSA has asked for it. In their hearts so many of the National members of Parliament on the backbench know that it is the right thing to do.I heard the former Speaker of this House in his valedictory go out saying that he had a deep regret that he had voted against the Crimes Amendment Bill in regard to homosexual law reform. I hope there is no member of this current Parliament that goes out of Parliament saying: “God I wish I’d done the right thing by our veterans.” It is not a matter of expense; it is a matter of respect. I ask the National Government and each member of the National Government to show that respect to our veterans.The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Phil Goff to the proposed amendment set out in in Supplementary Order Paper 480 in the name of the Hon Michael Woodhouse to clause 161(1) be agreed to:replace “section 148(1)” with “section 147A”.