O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Madam Assistant Speaker I'm confident you won't have as much difficulty concentrating on my presentation as you did on the last.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I wouldn't back myself on that Mr O'Connor.GREG O'CONNOR: I'll just say that—sorry Madam Assistant Speaker?ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I said I wouldn't back myself on that Mr O'Connor.GREG O'CONNOR: Well I'll do my best Madam Assistant Speaker at this time of day.I've been a part of the Social Services and Community Committee that has considered this bill. It is a very collegial select committee and like many select committees we have considered many aspects of this bill. You come into the House to speak and you think you've pretty much covered it. We've had the benefit of the Hon Ron Mark who has filled in many of the details that we weren't aware of and I think it's very good that we know much more background to put things in perspective. However it is late on a Thursday afternoon and I think it's probably apt that in that spirit of congeniality we continue.I think everyone's sort of claiming some sort of credit for this bill. There's an old saying that success has a thousand fathers; failure is an orphan. In this case I think if there were to be a paternity test I'd be confident that this side of the House is where the results would lie positive.However to the bill itself—a lot of the commentary around this bill has been talking about some sort of social benefits. I was looking at some of the comments made by a prominent broadcaster who was lambasting this as being another way that we are throwing money at the Pacific—an unfortunate comment. I just want to share with you a very good example of how this is benefiting both countries economically. I speak of a relation of mine who is married to someone who is actually a Cook Islander who was very successful in business in New Zealand—ran a home-kill business. After success he and his father went back to the Cook Islands and have re-established a similarly successful business. They now are most certainly into their over-50s and are over the qualifying period and now seek having to come back to New Zealand to close down their business so they will qualify for the pension under the old regime. However this allows them now to ensure that they are able to maintain their business that they do employ people there. So this has a direct economic benefit. So I think those of you who are watching those who think this is another sort of handout something we're doing—this is very much part of being New Zealand. The people in the Realm—and one of the previous speakers my namesake in fact described what the Realm is. I won't go through that. Essentially Cook Islanders Niueans and Tokelauans are New Zealand citizens but there is still a qualification. They still have to have been in New Zealand for 10 years and they have to also—this is a very important part particularly for those listening at home. The five years qualification can only be in one of those Realm countries. It can't be anywhere else in the Pacific and that's a very important part. So it's not as though they can take off live anywhere else—live in Germany live anywhere else—it has to be in one of those Realm countries. So it is to the benefit of all. And it means that socially this is very much a win-win situation.So in the short time allocated to me I just want to make sure that people understand that this is very much not only fair—and there's been all sorts of adjectives all sorts of descriptors of this—it actually makes economic sense as well. So this is a very important bill. It is something that again I can see why those opposite would be very keen to put their fingerprints on it—their DNA or whatever it is. I can understand why they'd want to do that because it is an excellent idea and I'm very very proud to stand here and commend this bill to the House.