van de Molen Tim; Williams PotoTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise and take a call on the Veterans' Support Amendment Bill. I'd like to start by acknowledging the service of all those past and present members of the New Zealand Defence Force especially those who have been overseas on operational deployments. Now this is an important piece of legislation to make sure that we are enabling those operationally deployed veterans to come back and to have the right support in place—the best support we can offer—to acknowledge the massive contribution that they have made. For any of those men and women who have served New Zealand in operational deployments it is a massive sacrifice for them and for their families and it is absolutely appropriate that we put in place the best support network we can to enable them to reintegrate as successfully as possible. I acknowledge Jan Logie's comments around some of the complexities and the horror that can be faced by those people in what they're seeing and experiencing offshore and how that can impact them when they come back to civilian life and try to reintegrate into their everyday environments not just for them but actually for their families as well and that's a critical part of it. Any time those soldiers are heading offshore those Defence Force personnel the family left behind—it has an impact on them as well. They're constantly wondering are their loved ones safe are they not what will happen to them what changes will they experience and how will that impact on the family and the community when they come back? So it's absolutely appropriate that we ensure these rules are tight and that's why this amendment which is looking to tighten up what was effectively a drafting error—look a number of decisions have been made on the basis of that acting in good faith that the rules as they had been put in place would enable those decisions to be made by the Minister and to be enacted accordingly. Indeed I think it would be a stretch to suggest that that might be questioned and I'd be looking unfavourably upon anyone who did question whether those service entitlements were appropriate. But it is absolutely essential that we do tidy that up. This has come to light and it's appropriate that we address that to just clear away any potential concerns in that space in terms of allowing those deployments before that date—where they were in place at the time or active at the time or indeed had ceased prior to that date—to be captured under section 9 as well. I think it's important too to specify here under clause 5 in the bill that the validation and declarations made in respect of certain deployments are not being invalidated for those ones that have already been made—and there are quite a number made over the years since 2015: Iraq Sinai Afghanistan Lebanon and many others—and that those declarations that were made should now continue to be considered valid as a result of this law change. This final section does indeed capture that to remove any doubt around the validity of those previous decisions that had been made as well. So look I don't want to delay this any more. I've always been a proponent of ensuring that legislation at every opportunity possible goes through a full and robust process. It's important to get that right to give people the opportunity to engage for them to have confidence in what we're doing here in the House. This situation of course it's a pretty minor technical change although the implications can be significant. There's broad agreement good visibility and transparency on what we're doing so I'm much more relaxed with expediting this process somewhat to ensure this comes into force as rapidly as possible. So on that note I'd like to end my contribution and just wrap up again by reiterating my thanks to all those men and women who have served their country on operational deployments and indeed those who have been members of the New Zealand Defence Force as well. Thank you for their service. It is much appreciated.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I understand this is a split call. I call the Hon Peeni Henare—five minutes.