Sepuloni Carmel: Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSepuloni Carmel: Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 04 November 2014. Volume:701;Page:556. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston):I stand to support the Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) Bill. Labour supports this bill particularly because it does intend to honour the constitutional relationship that we in New Zealand have with our New Zealand territories those being Niue the Cook Islands and Tokelau. What is proposed in this bill makes sense. At the moment we do have the Special Portability Arrangement; however what we see at the moment and what this bill addresses is the fact that Cook Island Niuean and Tokelauan residents need to be present in New Zealand on the date of application to be able to access those benefits.We do have a commitment to the three realm nations to ensure that we support their economic and social viability. In order to do this we need to be supportive of the idea that their people may decide to go back and invest in their own home countries. We have seen it many times across those three countries and actually across some of the non-realm countries as well but particularly the realm countries where we hear over and over again that the biggest problem facing those three countries—the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau—is depopulation. If we can encourage some of our Cook Island Niuean and Tokelauan residents in their senior years to go back and invest—in some cases set up businesses—in order to support their families there and to look for ways that their families can be self-sustainable then we have an obligation to support that and this bill does do that. It does support those who wish to go back live there in their latter years and undertake whatever initiatives they are interested in doing when they do move back there.While we are talking about honouring the relationship between New Zealand and the realm countries though we cannot help but reflect on this side of the House on some of the ways we have not honoured that relationship recently. This legislation is one way we can do that—by supporting those who are retiring to be able to go back to their Pacific countries and invest. However we need to think much more widely about how we as a country and our Government here invests and supports our realm countries so that we are honouring that relationship. At the moment we have situations such as with Television New Zealand (TVNZ) for example where we are not honouring that relationship. We have TVNZ which felt comfortable with the Government of the time a National Government and felt comfortable that it was the right environment to be able to cut funding to Māori and Pacific programming to reduce the content and to outsource anything other than Te Karere that had Māori and Pacific content.Given the special relationship that we have with the Pacific region we feel on this side of the House that as a country not only do we have an obligation to make sure that we honour the Treaty of Waitangi and honour our tangata whenua but also that we honour the Pacific region and all the indigenous knowledge and all the indigenous people who are part of it. And at the moment we are failing under this National Government to do this.As I said earlier depopulation is the issue that was brought up the most by the three countries I have been to particularly during the time when New Zealand undertook its inquiry into New Zealand’s relationship with the Pacific. Depopulation was mentioned over and over again by the Niuean Cook Island and Tokelauan Governments. It was really interesting because here we are at the moment with a high rate of Pacific unemployment with high levels of underachievement for Pacific peoples in our schools and very little being done by the National Government to address those things. But what we have been told by our Niuean Cook Island and Tokelauan people is that they have lost their biggest resource to New Zealand—their biggest resource being their people.I just want to end my speech by saying that this is recognition of the special relationship that we have with our Pacific countries particularly our realm countries but on this side of the House we would like the National Government to think more broadly about that special relationship that we have with those Pacific countries and look at ways in which they can honour that relationship. Thank you.