Naylor Jono: Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNaylor Jono: Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 18 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4601. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JONO NAYLOR (National): It is with great pleasure that I rise to talk about the Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) Bill. As a relatively new MP I was reflecting today that I think this is the first bill where I have been a part of the first reading the Committee stage the select committee and seeing this through to the end.Chris Hipkins: Not working hard enough.JONO NAYLOR: No it is just a great thing for me to be able to be a part of. It is a great thing to be able to be a part of doing something that is actually very positive. Of course everything this Government does is positive and this is just another one of those things. But it is just I think for me something that we can really look at and say that this is something positive we are doing for the people of the Cook Islands Tokelau and Niue. I think the last speaker Louisa Wall summed it up when she reflected on the very positive response that we had in large part from the submitters from those islands who talked about the fact that they were very grateful for what is going on here and what is happening.What we are doing is ensuring—and I think this is the particularly important part of this—that people no longer have to be resident in New Zealand at the time at which they apply for their superannuation to be able to be transferred to them if they are living in any of these Realm of New Zealand Islands. I think it is a critical thing because people do sometimes want to go back a little earlier than the age of 65 to retire and so it is great that they can do that.I think what is critical about this though is that it actually gives people who are from those places the same rights that are afforded to the rest of the New Zealanders who are living here. I am 48 years old now. If at some time I decide that I want to move to the Cook Islands or Niue or Tokelau and I want to stay there when I retire I am going to have to spend 5 years after the age of 50 in New Zealand. And yet what is being proposed by Supplementary Order Paper 71 which has come from the other side of the House is to give people who are from these islands something that other New Zealanders are not eligible for. That is not necessarily fair. So what we have done in putting this legislation forward—despite the fact that a member over the other side thought that not a lot of consideration had not gone into this a huge amount of consideration has gone into this to ensure that people can go back before the age of 65 and they can receive superannuation in exactly the same way as other New Zealanders can. I think that is absolutely critical.One of the points that was made from the other side of the House was just bizarre. I just want to pick up on it because it was stated that almost all of the submissions were for changing this. I thought: you know what? If this Government—if any Government to be honest—said every time that submissions came to a select committee “Oh the people who came to make submissions asked for this so therefore we should give it to them.” well the Government would go broke so quickly it would be unbelievable. So yes we do need to listen to submissions but we need to weigh them up against the reality of the situation. Yes we will get submissions on bills but we do need to be sure that we weigh those up against the reality of the situation. We listened to those people and we have responded to those people but it does not mean that we always have to do just what somebody wants every time they ask.These islands are facing some real issues. They are facing issues of depopulation. They are facing some challenges. As a nation New Zealand is offering protection to those other islands in the Realm of New Zealand and it is our responsibility to do what we can in an appropriate way to assist them. That is exactly what we are doing through this legislation. Through this legislation we are ensuring that it will be much easier for people to go back to be able to retire somewhere along the line perhaps a little bit earlier than they might have before and to make some useful contribution back home in those islands.I have heard members on the other side use the word “mean”. They have used the word “mean”. They have said that this Government is mean because we are not changing—Su’a William Sio: Mean-spiritedJONO NAYLOR: Mean-spirited even was the word that I have heard. It is absolutely bizarre because what we are talking about doing today is offering something that has not been offered before—something that up until now has been missing through successive Governments of New Zealand. I do not want to lay blame but it has not been addressed until now. We are addressing it and we are doing it so that the people of those Islands are being treated in the same way as any other New Zealander in terms of whether they wanted to retire there and I think that is critical in what we are doing.So I want to finish up by saying we are committed to these islands of the Realm of New Zealand. We do take it very seriously. We do acknowledge the special place that they do have but we do need to make sure that what we do is fair is equitable and is in line with everything else that we are doing. That is exactly what this bill does. This bill ensures that we are working in a way that is most appropriate to meet the needs of those islands and also keeping in mind what is fair and equitable for other New Zealanders.