Russell DeborahDr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. This bill is about doing the decent thing and I'm delighted that our colleagues on the other side of the House are now doing the decent thing too and supporting this excellent bill. The rates rebate has always been about doing the decent thing. We know that rates expenses are a big expense for people to bear but if you have a low income in fact that huge lumpy expenditure can be difficult to handle. That's exactly why Norman Kirk introduced the rates rebate. It was to help people to be able to pay that lumpy expense.I just want to point out one really important thing with the rates rebate that we're talking about today. It's actually available to all low-income earners. There are some very simple rules at present for claiming the rates rebate: you have to pay the rates on a home you have to live in that home and you have to be a low-income earner. Now at present the threshold for that low income is $24790 of income a year before tax. That's not a lot. But as it turns out it applies to superannuitants. Superannuitants—particularly a single superannuitant—will fall under that threshold if they are living on New Zealand superannuation alone. So that's why we so often associate it with people who are retired and are living on New Zealand superannuation. And of course many low-income earners have not yet had the opportunity to buy a home but one of the things we know about people who are on New Zealand superannuation is that during their lives they've had the opportunity to earn income to build up assets and all going well they end up in retirement owning their own home. But they still need to bear the expenses for that home.And there's another important point around that. We've got a very well-established strategy for looking after our senior citizens and it's around ageing in place—helping people to stay in their own homes. That's what part of this rates rebate does. What it is helping people to do is to bear the lumpy sum of rates—to bear that expense. It's giving them a little bit of a hand along the way and that enables them to manage in their old age even if they are living on only New Zealand superannuation.But there is a fundamental unfairness in the rates rebate scheme as it is right now and it is a fundamental unfairness that is being fixed by this excellent bill. As a House we are now all doing the decent thing and we are going to fix that particular unfairness. And it came about by chance. No one ever envisaged that this particular unfairness would arise. You see retirement villages are quite a new phenomenon. They're comparatively recent. They weren't particularly around when Norman Kirk first established the rates rebate scheme. But these days they are common—well perhaps not common as muck but they are common; there are several in my electorate in New Lynn—where the people who live there pay a lump sum to the owner of the retirement village for the right to occupy. And that right to occupy is like in effect owning their own home.Those people currently living in what is effectively their own home nevertheless could not claim the rates rebate—they cannot at the moment. But this jolly decent bill fixes that unfairness. So it makes changes around the definition of who may claim the particular rebate and it extends it to people who are occupying space in a retirement village. So this unfairness that came about by chance—well we are now taking the chance to put it right. And thanks to my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson we are putting it right now and doing the decent thing. It's also not even a lot of money each year. It's only $620. And I tell you to those of us in this House perhaps $620 doesn't sound like a lot but that can be a fair chunk to a superannuitant and that bit of money helps and it's all part of that keeping people in their own home.I just want to focus on something about the process of this bill and this again is where I'd like to thank Mr Hudson and his colleagues for now doing the decent thing. There was a fair amount of agreement on this bill in select committee. But somehow when it came out of select committee the agreement had disappeared. But what happened was it came back to the House it came back to the committee of the whole House and we worked on it. We worked and worked and worked on it to make sure that we got it right.This is something that we often do in this House. And I say we" even as only a very new member of this House because there were those of us who as new members were plunged straight into this debate and asked to understand what the bill was about understand the problem it was trying to fix understand how the legislation was being sorted out and work on the legislation to get it right. I know that I and many of my new colleagues all spoke to this bill and we worked together as a team with our colleagues from across the House to put it right. That's one of the great triumphs I think of this bill—that it is now an example of the way this House can working together do the decent thing and get things right. And that's what we are doing for the 26000 older New Zealanders who we know live in retirement villages these days. That's quite a significant number of New Zealanders and they are spread right through the country.I know that one of the issues that the National Party Opposition had with the bill was that perhaps there wasn't a clear mechanism for getting the rates rebate to our senior citizens who are living in retirement villages. There perhaps wasn't a clear understanding of how it would be calculated of who it would apply to. And I think what was instructive in the committee of the whole House stage was that in terms of the actual bill that is now in front of us—the bill where we have reached agreement—we now have some measures sitting in the bill telling us how the rebate is to be calculated who it applies to exactly who is counted as a resident of a retirement village who's going to administer the forms where the refund's going to come through and all the sorts of mechanisms that you need around a measure like this to be sure that it is actually going to take place and is actually going to get to the people who it needs to get to. So it is an excellent example of people doing the decent thing.As I reach towards the end of my time here I just want to recall some of the people I know living in my own electorate of New Lynn and I'm sure that my colleagues across the House will know people like this too. Two old gents—Eric and Sid people I've gotten to know this year. They're living in a retirement village in my electorate. Eric and Sid don't have a lot to go on. Eric bless him is looking after his wife who has Alzheimer's. That retirement village is providing a really good structure for them to order their lives it's providing community around them it's providing a place to be and it is safe and secure for them. I want Eric and Sid and I want their friends at that retirement village to be able to stay in place as they go through the golden years of their lives. And I'm telling you—they're pretty active gentlemen and it's great to see them like that.Now you might think that $620 a year won't make a lot of difference to them but I think it will. It will help them along the way and that's what we need to do for our senior citizens and indeed what we need to do for any of our low-income citizens who have the great good fortune to own their own home. We want to help them to stay in place.Thinking of my mates Eric and Sid thinking of the people who will be in my colleagues' electorates in retirement villages this is something that we are doing for those people for our senior citizens who we value so much. Today we are doing the decent thing and ensuring that they too can claim the rates rebate—that little bit of help that we give to our senior citizens. It's jolly decent. I'm glad we're doing it. I commend this bill to the House."