Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you. Kia orana. Fakaalofa atu ki a koe. Malo ni tau huhuga te Takitaki Fono. It's a great pleasure to rise on behalf of the Green Party and offer our support as well to this second reading of the Social Assistance (Residency Qualification) Legislation Bill. I will just say upfront that I'm not feeling compelled to draw this out for the full 10 minutes because this is actually quite a simple bill. We have debated this and the community has been calling for this for a long time and there is unanimous support thankfully in this House. The Green Party has long supported this change possibly not as long as New Zealand First I hear but still quite a long time. It's great to see us get to this milestone in the House and get unanimous support for it.For anybody who may be listening that is new to this what this legislation does—the purpose is to alter the residential qualifications for New Zealand superannuation and the veterans pension to allow the requirement that a person also has five years' residence and presence in New Zealand over the age of 50 to be met instead with residence and presence in New Zealand the Cook Islands Niue or Tokelau or any combination of these countries in that territory.The reason for this change is to take into account those close constitutional relationships with the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau. As it is really important to note—and I think the Premier of Niue was pointing out quite strongly—we do need to remember that often people from those countries feel as if it's often forgotten that they are indeed citizens of New Zealand. This bill reflects that constitutional responsibility that New Zealand has for all its citizens living in those Pacific countries in that territory.The current settings shift it from needing to have five years after the age of 50 being here to being able to be in any of those areas which I think is great. It specifically addresses the concern that while people may come to New Zealand to connect with wider family and look for further education opportunities or particular career prospects often there's a significant group of people who may at the age of 50 or around then look to be returning to their home base and wanting to bring those skills and that knowledge back home. And the current policy settings that we have at the moment are preventing that. That's been a real challenge in terms of those communities at home where they have—and I remind New Zealanders about some of the challenges for those communities of populations. I think in Niue the population right now is only 1626 from the last count; in Tokelau 1325; and in Cook Islands it's around 17500. You need all your people on board and you need as many people with skills as you can get to be able to get your community functioning well and building business and contributing to the running of the State. So it's been a real shame that our policy settings here have acted against people returning home to contribute and to support those communities and countries. It's fantastic to see this shift back.I want to thank the Social Services and Community Committee actually for their report on this bill. It's one of the more plain-English reports that I've seen that directly responds to the concerns that people raised. They didn't recommend any changes to the bill but they explicitly outlined the concerns that people had raised through their submissions. And there were only seven and only two oral submissions but they went through those concerns and addressed them in a committee report which is not actually that common—in my experience—to see it so clearly outlined. I really appreciated it as not having been part of that process.They pointed to some people having a concern that maybe this set up different requirements for residency for people who were born in New Zealand versus the Cook Islands Niue or Tokelau around the 10 years after the age of 20. We've had that clarified by the officials: that that isn't the case; that that is the same for somebody who is born in New Zealand as it is for people born in the Cook Islands Niue or Tokelau. Also there was a bit of a concern that maybe this could have an impact on economic activity in Niue and people thought that maybe it would reduce the incentive for people to return to New Zealand in order to satisfy the requirement for five years. They suggested that full entitlement to New Zealand super and the veterans pension should be extended to all citizens living in Niue which shifted the settings so that it would be different to what it is in all of the countries. So the advice that was offered to the committee—and accepted by the committee—was recognising that it's trying to get the consistency across and recognising as well that the constitutional arrangements in the Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau mean that each realm is responsible for their own tax and welfare system. So that is up to that point of superannuation—that it seemed to be consistent.There was the suggestion of extending the changes to all other countries in the Pacific. And I think fairly it was considered by the committee that the purpose of the bill is an acknowledgement of the special relationship and the fact that we all have New Zealand citizenship. So that is the reason for this specific focus.There were concerns raised about the implementation and assurances have been given that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade will be working closely in-country to support people to be able to access this support. So in conclusion the Greens are again very happy to support this.