Williams Poto: Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Poto: Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 16 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4446. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Kia orana Mr Chairperson. As the first Cook Islander to take a call on this bill I just want to make a little comment that this bill is intended to support those people who want to return to the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau. Even the esteemed member who just spoke before me Winston Peters—he too can take advantage of this bill return to the Cook Islands and collect his pension. He too can be basking in the sun at the Swordfish Club because this bill is about supporting people to return home for their retirement. But if this Government had taken note of the submitters the bill could have allowed younger people to return home and contribute to the economy of the Cook Islands.The purpose of this bill is to allow people who are eligible for New Zealand superannuation to collect it in the countries of the Realm—namely the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau. That does not mean just people who have a close affinity or have a blood connection to those islands of the Realm; that actually means each and every one of us as New Zealanders have that opportunity to do that. So the previous speaker is quite right in his assertions. This is an important bill for all people and in fact when we were first debating this in the first reading I know I made the comment that this would be something that I would consider doing myself. Given the opportunity it is something that I would really like to do.My colleague Carmel Sepuloni talked about what happened when we were given as countries of the Realm free association with New Zealand. What it means is that we have New Zealand citizenship. As people who are of the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau descent we travel on New Zealand passports. We are New Zealand citizens. What that meant particularly when the first planes started to go to the Cooks in the 1960s was that we could travel quite freely as Cook Islanders. And we did; we travelled freely. It meant that our home islands became quite “depopularised” if that is a word. So now we are in a situation—Jono Naylor: “Depopulated” is the word.POTO WILLIAMS: —thank you—back in the home islands where we have got low numbers of people to support the economy as taxpayers. This bill when it was first promoted was asking for people to return home to the Cooks to Niue and to Tokelau not necessarily as older people in their retirement but as people who had built up some expertise and experience in this country and possibly some backing in terms of their financial status—to take that back home to the Cooks to Niue to Tokelau to set up businesses to take their expertise back there and to develop the economies back in the Realm Islands.I remember that my own father used to take advantage of going back to the Cooks in the wintertime to escape the winter here. Sometimes he would go without my mother much to my mother’s distress but he would do so for 3 or 4 months at a time. He would come back to New Zealand because there was the requirement that you could not be out of the country for more than 6 months. You needed to continue to reapply for New Zealand superannuation. What this bill does is it changes that eligibility requirement.Initially you need to work in New Zealand for 10 years—that is the first part of the qualification—in order to gain 50 percent of the New Zealand superannuation. Then in order to have 100 percent of superannuation you should work for 20 years. But then there is another requirement: post the age of 50 you should be resident and present in New Zealand for 5 years. What that means is that you may have already returned to the Cooks you may have set up a business—and there are lots of young and not-so-young entrepreneurial people in the Cooks particularly who are working in the tourist industry and who operate businesses like the Swordfish Club or diving operations or hotels and motels. If they want to collect their New Zealand superannuation which they are entitled to do as New Zealand citizens and having met the earlier eligibility requirement they then have to return back to New Zealand for 5 years. That makes no sense whatsoever. They have to leave their businesses they have to leave their jobs and their families and return to New Zealand for a period of 5 years.Some of the submitters told us that they were leaving jobs behind coming back to New Zealand and going on the dole. That makes no sense at all. The submitters were very very clear about this particular point. It would make a huge difference to them if that criterion was not required if they did not have to do those 5 years post the age of 50. It would make a huge amount of difference.It is such a significant clause in the bill that we had an extraordinary thing happen. We had two heads of State come and present to the select committee. Both the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands and the Premier of Niue as well as Ministers of their Cabinets came and presented to the select committee to say: “If there is one thing we would change about this bill it would be to remove that requirement of being resident and present in New Zealand for 5 years after the age of 50.” It would make a significant difference and this is the issue addressed by New Zealand First in the Supplementary Order Paper it has put up. It would make a huge difference. It was such a significant clause that members of the select committee asked the officials to go away and ask how much that would cost. What would the cost be to New Zealand if we were to take that eligibility requirement out? The answer to that is between $9 million and $21 million. In terms of a flag referendum that is peanuts. And it is significant because a small amount between $9 million and $21 million would make a huge difference to those three Realm Islands—a huge difference.Louisa Wall: What is the benefit?POTO WILLIAMS: Well the cost benefit to New Zealand is that people would move to the Cooks to Niue and to Tokelau earlier and they would no longer be a burden on the health system. In terms of New Zealand aid into those Realm Islands they would be developing businesses and supporting the economy back in those Realm Islands and they would no longer be a burden on the New Zealand taxpayer. So for a small amount of money it would have made a significant difference to those Realm Islands.The other thing that I want to say about this and I have a lot to say on this topic is that what this bill points to as well—the unintended consequence of this bill—is about the quality of citizenship. The people from the Cooks Niue and Tokelau are New Zealand citizens but by having this eligibility requirement it means that these citizens are treated differently from other New Zealand citizens. I was at the Christchurch citizenship ceremony last night and we played a video from the Governor-General who said that when you become a citizen of New Zealand you are entitled to all the rights and responsibilities of New Zealand citizens. That includes eligibility for your New Zealand superannuation. Did you know that if you are resident in the Cook Islands for 5 years that counts towards your citizenship application to New Zealand? So this bill actually says that being resident in the Cook Islands Niue or Tokelau means nothing in terms of your New Zealand citizenship.So if there is one question I would like to ask the Minister in the chair it is why do we have this eligibility requirement? I would like the Minister to explain why she believes that this eligibility requirement is required because it clearly makes a huge difference to the people of the Realm Islands and it does set up a different class of citizenship. It is evident that if that was not the case the benefit to New Zealand would be greater and in fact it would make it much fairer. It would actually align the other citizenship requirements for this country.I want to be really clear about what the submitters said. There were I think somewhere in the region of 13 or 14 submitters. Every single one of the submitters bar one who spoke about the war pensions—