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:19301. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):As we have said before on the Veterans’ Support Bill this bill is strongly supported by Labour. Why would Labour not support this when back in 2007 I worked very hard with the then Minister of Veterans’ Affairs Rick Barker to introduce a scheme that would update and modernise the War Pensions Act 1954? That was part of a process of negotiation that I had as Minister of Defence along with Rick Barker as Minister of Veterans’ Affairs with the then president of the Royal New Zealand Returned and Services’ Association John Campbell and the chair of the Ex-Vietnam Services Association Chris Mullane. What we did at that time was work out a process that was designed to achieve the best possible replacement of the 1954 Act. That replacement we thought would be best worked through after an extensive period of consultation by a group that was outside the political process. We gave that task to the Law Commission. The Law Commission did do its work incredibly thoroughly and I would have thought that there was no room for political debate around this—that what we would do is put in place the critical recommendations of the Law Commission.Part of the objective of this legislation was to be more generous to our war veterans. But for reasons that this Government has still not explained adequately it decided to cut costs by cutting benefits to the veterans. First of all the Minister said that he was not going to allow all veterans who had served on overseas deployments in operational areas to get the veterans pension. You would get that only if you were 52 percent disabled and try as I did in the Social Services Committee to find whether there was any rationale behind why a person had to be 52 percent disabled to get a veterans pension no explanation was forthcoming. The officials had worked hard on this legislation. They could not give an explanation. The National members of the Social Services Committee sitting over there could not give an explanation either. I brought in Supplementary Order Paper 441 which would have changed that. The Minister backed down at that point because he knew his position was absolutely unsupportable and he agreed that the veterans pension would apply to all of those who had operational service.Along with that there are these small benefits. You get the community services card automatically and you keep your pension if you are hospitalised for more than 13 weeks. But in an extraordinary display of penny-pinching the Minister said: “But we are not going to give those veterans a lump-sum payment on death to cover the funeral costs”—it is a small amount at $5700—“unless they are still 52 percent disabled.” I asked the Minister why. Outside of this Chamber I sought to get agreement from the Minister. First of all he said that this would just help the families. Unapologetically I say that the families of the veterans deserve that support and every veteran would say that. The veterans are not naive about that. Then the Minister said that the cost was too great. I asked the question in the select committee on the estimates and the cost is $7.3 million in the first year dropping by $1 million every 2 years.This Government in the foreign affairs estimates is going to spend $13 million on a conference next month in Samoa—$13 million—but somehow we cannot afford to give $7 million to honour the veterans who put their lives at risk who sacrificed for their country who worked for their country. We cannot afford it. We can give Rio Tinto $30 million to keep Bluff going for another year or two but we cannot give our veterans $7.3 million. That excuse simply does not wash. I asked the Minister what was happening with veterans’ affairs expenditure. You know it is down $23 million over the last 5 years. It has been cut by $23 million. Over the next 4 years it will be cut by another $22 million. The money is there now so let some person just one person on the National benches stand up and explain why we are rejecting what the veterans ask for why we are rejecting what the RSA asks for and why we are rejecting what the Law Commission recommended.The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 480 in the name of the Hon Michael Woodhouse to Part 1 be agreed to.Amendments agreed to.The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 441 in the name of the Hon Phil Goff to Part 1 be agreed to.A party vote was called for on the question that the amendments be agreed to.Hon Phil Goff: Are you sure the Māori Party are opposed? They said they were going to support it.