Lees-Galloway Iain: Veterans’ Support Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Veterans’ Support Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 10 April 2014. Volume:697;Page:17169. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North):Labour does support the Veterans’ Support Bill as our veterans’ affairs spokesperson Phil Goff has already outlined. We do have some changes that we would like to make to the legislation as well and I will come back to both our support for the legislation and also the changes we would like to make. But I want to say at the outset that Melissa Lee really needs to just think about history. She is someone whom I think does understand the importance of history and certainly the importance of her nation’s history. She has spoken about the association between New Zealand and Korea since the Korean conflict and the role that New Zealand soldiers played in that conflict. So she has an understanding of history and she understands the significance of knowing your history and getting things right. But Melissa Lee got up and asked the question: why did Labour not do anything about a replacement for the 1954 War Pensions Act? She is suggesting that Labour did nothing.Well that could not be further from the truth. What Labour did is it worked with the RSA to identify what the issues were. There was an agreement between Rick Barker—it was in fact Rick Barker who was the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs not Phil Goff as Melissa Lee suggested. It was Rick Barker who worked with the then president of the New Zealand Returned Services Association and he initiated the Law Commission report into the 1954 Act. The ball started rolling back in 2006. It was Labour that got the work started on this. In fact it was not too long after the change of Government when the Law Commission came back with its recommendations. It was June 2010 when the Law Commission came back with its comprehensive report and its recommendations for how the new legislation should be constructed—June 2010.We now find ourselves here nearly 4 years later because National sat on its hands for years after that Law Commission report came back. Melissa Lee do not get up in this Chamber and say that Labour did nothing. Labour started the work and then it was National that delayed the progress on this legislation. So do not attempt to say that Labour in Opposition has not done enough for veterans. There is only one party that has dragged its feet. There is only one party that it has dragged its feet on this legislation and it is National—it is National.Mike Sabin: Helen Clark has always been a great supporter of the armed services of course!IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Yes actually the Labour Government put far more money into the armed services. I am glad that Mike Sabin raised that because the Labour Government had to rescue the defence forces from years of under-investment by that National Government. The vehicles that our troops had to drive around in in Bosnia the armoured personnel carriers that our troops went to Bosnia in could not keep up with the freight transport vehicles of our allies. That was the state of our armed forces after 9 years of a National Government. So again Mike Sabin get your history right. Do not tell us that Labour is not interested in the defence forces. Do not tell us that Labour is not interested in veterans. Labour has consistently been the Government that has put more money into the defence forces and has put more money into veterans’ support. The 9 long years of National in the 1990s saw our defence forces eroded to almost nothing—eroded to almost nothing under the National Government.So what happened? When that Law Commission report came back to Parliament National sat on it—National sat on it. But what is worse than that is that what National then did was it picked and chose what aspects of the Law Commission report it would implement. Yes this legislation is good. This legislation is a great improvement on what we had in the 1954 Act. It is a huge improvement on what we had in the 1954 Act. But there are things missing and that is because this National Government is not interested in doing the full deal for veterans. It is over an amount of money that is so insignificant—$11 million reducing over time. Often when you bring in a new initiative it costs a certain amount in year 1 and then the costs increase in the out-years. In this case it is $11 million decreasing over the following few years to $8 million. Well if $11 million is money that this Government cannot find in order to make sure that veterans get a fair deal then the Government’s books must be a very very sorry state of affairs indeed. If $11 million is going to be the difference between—I do not know—reaching surplus or not then this Government has clearly failed on a number of fronts.I think what National should do is support Phil Goff’s Supplementary Order Paper. It makes sense. It is what the Law Commission recommended and it is what the RSA wants. In the grand scheme of things it is not a huge amount of money to recognise the service of our veterans—not just our veterans from prior conflicts such as Viet Nam and Korea and those who are still left from World War II but also to recognise those who have served us in recent years in places like East Timor Afghanistan and the Solomon Islands. That is what this Government should be doing. But it refuses. I really cannot tell why. The Government will make the claim that it costs too much but it patently does not. It clearly does not cost too much. I want to hear from the Government members their explanation for why it is that they did not support this recommendation at the select committee. Why is it exactly? It cannot be the cost—it cannot be the cost. An amount of $11 million cannot be money the Government cannot find. The Government found a billion dollars to give tax cuts to the top 10 percent. It found $800 million to bail out South Canterbury Finance. It found $30 million to bail out Rio Tinto. It found $27 million to give to private schools. The money is out there. The Government is perfectly capable of spending money on the people whom it chooses. Why cannot it spend this tiny amount of money on veterans? Why? I want to hear from the members opposite as to why that is. Why is it that the Government cannot spend that money?As I said though that is a change to the legislation that we do want to see but overall this is an improvement on what we had before because the 1954 legislation was becoming outdated and it was becoming outmoded. That is why Labour initiated the review of the legislation. The 1954 Act actually had not changed in any significant way in the—I am trying to count—many many decades since it was first enacted. As is often the case it was legislation that was responsive to the needs at the time and it was responsive primarily to the needs of World War II veterans. Of course it came in about two decades before ACC was established. ACC has changed the playing field for what veterans are entitled to and what they can receive through the normal social security framework that we have in New Zealand. So we needed a new system that not only recognised the change but recognised that we have some veterans who receive an entitlement based on the service that they gave before ACC came in and other veterans on the service that they undertook after ACC came in. So the bill acknowledges those differences and sets up two separate schemes for those different groups of veterans and that is a significant improvement.Overall what this legislation does is it implements a number of the Law Commission recommendations. We think it should implement more of them and we have a Supplementary Order Paper to that effect but in general we do support this legislation.