Radhakrishnan PriyancaPRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker and talofa lava" in celebration of Samoan Language Week. As you mentioned I was interrupted in yesterday's debate as I rose to take a call on the Veterans' Support Amendment Bill which is particularly exciting because it kind of sits across both my select committees in terms of veterans affairs sitting within the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee. This particular amendment I understand—well I'm hoping we'll get the chance to actually look over this piece of legislation at the Social Services and Community Committee.This is a very technical bill. It's actually a very short bill as well. It aims to correct a drafting error in section 9 of the Veterans' Support Act 2014. It is important that we do this quite quickly so that New Zealand veterans can actually be reassured and be provided with a certain sense of certainty that their entitlements will be paid and also so that Veterans Affairs which administers entitlements to our veterans can really just get on with their work and ensure that eligible veterans get what they're entitled to.Just going back to where this comes from the 2014 legislation that this particular bill will amend a portion of broadened the criteria for "qualifying operational service". Before this the legislation that governed this aspect was the War Pensions Act 1954. It was really narrow and it only referred to service in war and emergencies as qualifying operational service. So the 2014 legislation broadened these criteria. It included a wide range of operational and environmental threats from the viewpoint that things have moved on and contexts change over time. The existing legislation confirms the intent so that's really the crux of what this amendment bill aims to do—to ensure that the policy intent matches practice and what's actually been happening. Existing legislation confirms the intent that the 2014 legislation was for Ministers to be able to make declarations of qualifying operational service before during and after deployments.Since 2015 this has actually happened and that's where practice has not quite matched with the policy intent of the 2014 legislation. Since 2015 Ministers have made 14 historical declarations that cover multiple deployments and various geographical areas as well. This affects roughly 675 veterans their spouses and family members including the families of personnel who were killed in action as well. So while this may be a bill that sounds like it affects a small-ish number of people they are people who have served on behalf of New Zealand in various deployments and this bill will actually just ensure that they get the entitlements that the previous bill intended for them to get.Recent advice indicates that the interpretation of that particular section section 9 could not be stretched to provide jurisdiction and for Ministers to make declarations in respect of historical or retrospective deployments and that would be an issue because that would mean that going forward these veterans and their spouses and families may not then get the entitlements that they should get.So it's a very narrow amendment bill. It basically just amends a drafting error. My final point that I make in this short call is that as I was reading this bill it took me back to the Social Security (Winter Energy Payment) Amendment Bill which our select committee looked at as well. I went back to the Hansard and saw that members opposite—that was also a bill that amended a drafting error very similar to this. This drafting error was a few years ago might I add but because that fell within the purview of this Government the kinds of speeches that members opposite gave about this "shoddy" process—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order!PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: —was completely out of order. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker."