Lee Melissa: Veterans’ Support Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLee Melissa: Veterans’ Support Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 22 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19304. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MELISSA LEE (National):E te Heamana tēnā koe. Koutou ngā rangatira o te Whare nei tēnā koutou i runga i te reo karanga e whakanui ana i Te Reo Māori. Tēnā koutou tēnā koutou kia ora anō tātou katoa.[Greetings to you Mr Chairman and to you collectively esteemed ones of this House upon the call to celebrate the Māori language. So acknowledgments salutations and greetings once again to all of us.]Hopefully my pronunciation is actually OK to celebrate Te Reo language week. This is my first opportunity to speak in the Committee stage of the Veterans’ Support Bill. I would like to start by sending my condolences to the Vinten family. Des Vinten is the president of the New Zealand Korea Veterans Association. His wife Helen has passed away and today was her funeral. I was lucky enough to be part of the family and friends who were in Lower Hutt today for her funeral. I send the family my love and my sincere condolences.I think everybody knows that I hold the Korean veterans very dear to my heart. Being the only Korean-born member of Parliament I have always said that I owe my life to the veterans because who knows what would have actually happened if the Korean War did not end the way it did? For 3 years Korea was devastated with the bloodiest war. Korean veterans the K-force answered the call of the United Nations to assist the Korean Peninsula. The South Koreans are for ever grateful. I do not know how the North Koreans actually feel about the Korean veterans—I have not talked to one of them—but the South Koreans are definitely grateful for their service their very long service.It is winter and I forgot to wear socks today. I am wearing high heels. My feet were freezing when I went to the church service. It reminded me of the talk at the veterans association. They talked about the nasty winter they went to fight in. Their boots split open. New Zealand’s winter is nowhere near as cold as the one that they faced in Korea. They fought for my former nation. I take this opportunity to say thank you to all Korean veterans—the New Zealand Korea Veterans Association; the K-force veterans—who served there.This bill will make sure that we can better meet the needs of the older veterans who require assistance to stay in their own homes and also meet the needs of veterans on modern-day deployment who need rehabilitation and assistance to return to work. Earlier Mr Phil Goff talked about this bill not providing the veterans pension to all of those servicemen. I would like to just correct him. Supplementary Order Paper 480 in the name of the Minister of Veterans’ Affairs means that all of the veterans do get the veterans pension. The only difference is the lump-sum payment. It still requires the attachment of the disablement criteria which now sits at 52 percent.The Veterans’ Support Bill still contains many of the provisions in the current Act. The service eligibility criteria remains the same and all the veterans currently covered under the 1954 Act will have coverage under the new law. Health care treatments for accepted conditions will continue to be funded no veteran will have their entitlements reduced and thousands will actually benefit from increased care and support. To me that is a good thing.This National-led Government is committed to honouring the servicemen and women the service that veterans have given to our country and the people who have actually served in overseas deployments. We owe them a great debt. Service in defence of our nation for freedom and democracy around the world needs appropriate recognition in legislation. The Veterans’ Support Bill delivers on our election promise. This Government has committed $60 million for a package to support this new legislation. Part of this package saw the war disablement pension and the surviving spouse pension increase by 5 percent last year on top of inflation. We are supporting an amendment to the bill that will extend eligibility for the veterans pension to all veterans over the age of 65.I think it was my learned colleague to my right Mike Sabin who said in an earlier speech in this debate—I think it was the first reading—that our veterans our servicemen and women do not go to war or deployment overseas thinking that they are going to come back and get a lump sum. They actually do go into service for their country because they feel that it is the right thing to do. They are duty-bound—honour-bound. I was reading one of the books about the Korean War and I read something that some of those men wrote. They went there on an adventure. They did not go to war because they felt that they were going to get a bigger pay at the end of it; they went for adventure. They felt that they were joining their friends in comradery in overseas nations that required their service. Korea was one of them. There are plenty of examples of their service displayed on our walls. New Zealanders have gone to many many wars and they have served our people and the people overseas. Their service is recognised in this bill.This bill will increase the number of New Zealanders eligible for the veterans pension by nearly 17000—from 8600 currently to more than 25000. That is 19900 veterans and about 5000 spouses. Importantly it also means that thousands more veterans will benefit from any future changes provided to those on a veterans pension. We understand the importance to veterans of the recognition of their service and that being paid a veterans pension gives them the distinction from others who did not actually serve—namely New Zealand superannuation. The lump-sum payment on death will continue to be paid to all of those servicemen and women who meet the current threshold as is provided for in the bill as drafted.The legislation provides for two schemes of entitlement. Scheme one starts on 1 October this year and applies to all veterans with service from the Second World War through to the Viet Nam War. Scheme two starts on 1 October 2015 and applies to personnel with service post - 1 April 1974 when ACC was introduced. It will be closely aligned with ACC entitlements as recommended by the Law Commission.The Government is committed to improving veterans support and this is reflected in the bill as reported back by our Social Services Committee. Submissions questioned the 55 percent threshold and whether that was in fact appropriate and I know that Mr Goff talked about that in terms of the appropriate level of whole-person impairment. I personally had difficulty trying to gather the way that Veterans Affairs New Zealand calculated the level of disablement as well because when the total was calculated it ended up becoming more than 100 percent.So the way we have done it now in terms of the percentage is that it goes up to 100 percent and they now have to be 52 percent disabled to be entitled to the lump-sum payment—the extra payment apart from the veterans pension. This is much clearer than it was previously when disablements were lumped together added together and often ended up becoming more than 100 percent. I do not know if anybody is 100 percent disabled—I would have thought that meant you are actually not alive. The select committee established that 52 percent whole-person impairment was the most equivalent threshold and in order not to disadvantage veterans the threshold will be moved from 55 percent to 52 percent. To further ensure that no veterans are disadvantaged by this provision the bill has been amended to provide that a veteran or other claimant who currently meets the threshold for entitlement under the 1954 Act will continue to do so if they claim under this bill.We have put a lot of work into this bill. I see that the advisers are here. They have helped us through the long process that the select committee went through. We have had many submissions from our veteran community as well and we have had discussions with the Opposition. We are very happy to have arrived at where we are. It would be a fantastic thing if we could provide more money for our veterans. It would be a fantastic thing if we could provide all the support that we possibly could. We have to be fair and we have to be fiscally balanced but we have to be supportive of our veterans.