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:19317. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):I listened very carefully to the explanation by Māori Party members as to why they have flip-flopped on their support for the amendment in my name Supplementary Order Paper 441 to this Veterans’ Support Bill. They had given me that undertaking to support it. I have to tell the Māori Party members that they have been duped. They have been totally hoodwinked—Dr Rajen Prasad: Again.Hon PHIL GOFF: —again by what this Government said. Let me use the first example that Te Ururoa Flavell used as to why they supported the bill. He said that they have reduced the level of disablement you need for funeral expenses from 70 percent to 52 percent. Anyone who sat on that Social Services Committee—and everyone on the backbench over there was on that committee—knows that that is absolutely wrong. Seventy percent of the old system is simply equivalent to 52 percent of the new system. It will not bring in one extra person for a lump-sum entitlement yet that member from the Māori Party comes in and says “Look what we’ve got. We’ve lowered the entitlement ratio.” It is exactly—exactly—the same. They are being duped. They have been duped.Then we get this other hoary old excuse that we will have a review in 2 years. Do you know what National said about the Law Commission recommendation? It said that it would not bring this in at this time. Do you know what veterans around the country told me? They said: “Bloody typical. They will wait until we are all dead and then they will give us the entitlement.” That is what our veterans think.I have got in my hand the regulatory impact statement that goes with this bill. What does it say? It says that the veteran population as a whole will decline by 28 percent over the next 5 years—delay delay delay until nobody is eligible. This morning we heard the sad news that a member of A Company of the 28th Māori Battalion died yesterday. Do you know how many veterans we have left in A Company from the 28th Māori Battalion? [Interruption] No there is just one—just one—left. Surely at this time we can make the gesture of saying to our veterans—there is a handful left from the Second World War—that we respect you we respect what you did and a very small gesture of appreciation is that we will meet your funeral costs on death to relieve your family of that obligation.This really is a disgrace. They will review it in 2 years. It is $7.4 million. That is all it is. Te Ururoa Flavell said: “Oh but they’re lifting the requirement of losing the pension after 13 weeks in hospital.” I asked what the cost was. It was so small that the answer is here in black and white. It says the amount is “negligible”. It probably does not even make five figures. They have given Te Ururoa Flavell the equivalent of beads and blankets—it is worth nothing. It is $7.4 million.Alfred Ngaro: Oh you’re better than that.Hon PHIL GOFF: I ask Alfred Ngaro why it is that his Government cannot afford $7.4 million in the first year declining by $1 million every 2 years to honour our veterans.Mike Sabin: It’s not about that. It’s a privacy decision.Hon PHIL GOFF: I want to thank Mike Sabin for his earlier compliment but if we follow his logic—that we cannot give it now because they did not get it before—we would not be changing anything in this Veterans’ Support Bill. If we were not to give something new to veterans today we would not have changed the Act at all. We have changed the Act because we believe that veterans deserve more—$7.4 million more.You know what the Government gave to Rio Tinto would have paid the cost of giving this to the veterans for at least 4 years—over 4 years; probably 5 years because the cost is declining. But somehow Rio Tinto is more important to this crony capitalist National Government than honouring our veterans—honouring our veterans not because the Labour Party said it should have been done but because the independent group set up to analyse what was going to the veterans said this is a change we should make and because our veterans said this is a change we should make. Every one of those members in the back row over there heard veteran after veteran come in and ask for just this gesture. You know words are cheap.The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 480 in the name of the Hon Michael Woodhouse to Parts 3 4 and 5 be agreed to.Amendments agreed to.Parts 3 4 and 5 as amended agreed to.