Edmonds BarbaraBARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you Madam Speaker It's a privilege as a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee that reviewed this bill to be able to speak on it. For this third reading speech I thought I would take this opportunity to summarise the bill as it progressed through the House and some of the history around it. The reason why I say that—and the member who has just sat down knows me well—is that my hope is in future a young budding policy analyst or a law clerk who has been tasked with the tedious task to look at Hansard and to track the history of the residency requirements for the superannuation and veterans pension has a reference point to start their research because the last time we looked at the actual residency time frame was I think 1938. That's when it was first set for 10 years.Again I'd like to like other members of the House acknowledge Andrew Bayly for bringing forward the bill and carrying it forward from the 52nd Parliament. Mr Bayly as we've discussed was very constructive and we found it was very easy to work with him in the select committee. We'd also like to thank the Minister for her willingness to improve the bill because obviously the Minister has her own work programme so she allowed officials to work constructively with members and her work was so significant that Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 58 effectively rewrote the entire bill bar the title. We'd like to thank the Ministry of Social Development officials and the Parliamentary Counsel Office for their work on the bill. Their subject matter expertise was relied on heavily in our select committee analysis of this bill and they were incredibly responsive. Of note their initial briefing on the report was actually excellent.Now if I look to the history of pension in New Zealand the entitlement to New Zealand superannuation and the veterans pension is based on residence. People must have been a resident and present in New Zealand for at least 10 years after the age of 20 to be eligible five of which must be after the age of 50 and if you are a resident in the Cook Islands Niue or Tokelau—or our Realm countries—that can count towards the requirement for residence after the age of 50 but not towards the requirement for residence after the age of 20. Time spent overseas can count towards the residence requirements under certain circumstances. The residence requirement as I've said has actually varied over time. New Zealand's first public pension was 1898 the old age pension and it required applicants to have continuously been resident in New Zealand for 25 years immediately preceding their application. This requirement was reduced in 1936 to 20 years immediately preceding the application. It was then reduced in 1938 to 10 years for people who were in New Zealand on 15 March 1938. Now that date is specific; it's because it was to support people hit by the Great Depression. Then what happened in 1972? The requirement for applicants for the universal superannuation benefit was fixed at 20 years continuous residence and the requirement for means tested age benefit was fixed at 10 years. So we introduced a two-tier pension system. But then when national super came in in 1977 it replaced the two-tier pension system and the residence requirement went back to 10 years and here we are today. As members have said the genesis of this bill is with New Zealand First. It was a 2017 manifesto item. The then member Mark Patterson sponsored the bill—the first reading was on 1 July—and he stated It is a great honour to have the opportunity to bring this longstanding New Zealand First policy to the House. In its construct it is a very simple and narrow bill but it is a significant one. It seeks to increase the period of residency required to qualify for New Zealand superannuation from 10 years to 20 years between the ages of 20 and 65. At its heart this bill is about fairness fairness to New Zealanders who have worked and paid taxes here." The member continued "It is interesting to note that the current 10-year threshold came into law in 1938 when life expectancy for men was 65 and for women 68. This bill is long overdue." The bill then was referred to the Finance and Expenditure Committee. "Robust" and "constructive" are probably the best adjectives to describe our work in the committee. We worked constructively across the House with officials with submitters so I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the over 350 submitters on this bill. Like the previous member I also acknowledge the work of our member Naisi Chen for her work rallying a lot of the Asian community to ensure that they submitted on this bill. So we received a lot of individual submissions on the bill. Many of the submissions were similar and they were: "We don't support the change. But if you do can you make the transition fairer so we can have a plan and have certainty?"As members have talked about in the House already the bill as introduced had several key problems. Two of them were (1) it didn't protect the entitlements of current pensioners and then (2) it had no lead-in time to allow for certainty. We also heard in select committee that New Zealand and Australia are the two countries with the lowest entitlement. The average in the OECD is 26 years to be entitled to super. We worked through the modifications for our Realm countries of Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau to align with other recent changes to the superannuation and the veterans pension schemes to allow people to migrate to the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau before they turned 65 and still receive super. The committee recommended that for someone to be eligible migrating to a Realm country they may still have to be resident and present in New Zealand for at least 10 years since the age of 20. We also recommended that we preserve the 10-year period for refugees who have become residents at the age 55 or above. Those changes have survived the following stages and are covered in clause 4 of the bill that's on the Table today.So why do we support this bill? It is unusual—it is a member's bill from across the House but we support this bill because increasing the residence requirements for New Zealand super is about improving fairness between longer- and shorter-term New Zealand residents and safeguarding the future of superannuation. It is effectively what was covered in the opening comments by the member who first brought it to the House in the 52nd Parliament. But as we've seen we did really change the bill a lot during the process. We also support the bill because the current residence requirement ensures that almost all New Zealanders are protected in old age. But it also means that someone who's been in New Zealand for just 10 years receives the same pension as someone who's lived and worked here for their entire life. A 20-year residence requirement will ensure that New Zealand superannuation and veterans pension recipients have more substantial connection have more substantial contributions to New Zealand. So again I'd like to thank the member Andrew Bayly and congratulate him on progressing this through the House the Minister and her officials for their constructiveness during the select committee phase and then the Minister who tabled SOP 58 which effectively changed the whole bill. And then we'd also like to thank the submitters and again I acknowledge Naisi Chen for her work on the bill. So on that note I commend this bill to the House."