Logie Jan: Veterans’ Support Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Veterans’ Support Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 30 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19709. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. The Green Party is pleased to support the Veterans’ Support Bill. It is a piece of legislation steeped in symbolic meaning and practical importance for the 40000 veterans with qualifying service and their families people who have been waiting 7 years since this law was first referred to the Law Commission for resolution. I am exceedingly thankful that it is passing in this term of Parliament. The world and our understandings of harm and the possibilities of rehabilitation have changed dramatically as has the nature of warfare since the original War Pensions Act 1954 was passed. An update is clearly overdue and it is time to allow families certainty to be able to move forward.This bill will make changes to the administration and decision-making processes hopefully making them easier for veterans. It will provide a greater focus on rehabilitation and enable the provision of services to better meet the needs of elderly veterans as well as those of contemporary and future deployments. Changes have been made to this legislation through the Social Services Committee thanks to the work of the Greens and Labour and they were received by the Government. Post the select committee I would offer my thanks to the Māori Party which has negotiated I think quite fiercely to get further small changes to this bill that are important changes. Sadly the changes have not quite gone all the way. I must say I still fail to understand the apparent meanness of the Government in holding out on such a small financial contribution to ensure all veterans and their families are entitled to all entitlements. I really did feel that the mood in the select committee was one of commonality of concern and yet sadly still we have not been able to deliver on all of the 170 recommendations from the Law Commission or everything the submitters requested of us.It is important for me again on this the day after the centenary of the start of the First World War to take a moment to reflect on what those men young and old experienced at that time and remind us of our duty to do our absolute best to avoid sending any more men women or people to war. For me no one has said it better than Wilfred Owen describing the horrors in a way that I think helps some of us who are lucky enough to have known only peace to come close to or to at least in some way imagine the lifetime costs borne by those fighting the wars created by people in places like this. With the risk of a terrible schoolgirl recitation I do want to read the poem from Wilfred Owen because for me there has been no message or poem that has helped me understand it better than this one. So I beg patience of people.Bent double like old beggars under sacksKnock-kneed coughing like hags we cursed through sludgeTill on the haunting flares we turned our backsAnd towards our distant rest began to trudge.Men marched asleep. Many had lost their bootsBut limped on blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hootsOf gas-shells dropping softly behind.Gas! GAS! Quick boys!—An ecstasy of fumblingFitting the clumsy helmets just in time;But someone still was yelling out and stumblingAnd floundering like a man in fire or lime.—Dim through the misty panes and thick green lightAs under a green sea I saw him drowning.In all my dreams before my helpless sightHe plunges at me guttering choking drowning.If in some smothering dreams you too could paceBehind the wagon that we flung him inAnd watch the white eyes writhing in his faceHis hanging face like a devil’s sick of sin;If you could hear at every jolt the bloodCome gargling from the froth-corrupted lungsObscene as cancer bitter as the cudOf vile incurable sores on innocent tongues—My friend you would not tell with such high zestTo children ardent for some desperate gloryThe old Lie: Dulce et decorum estPro patria mori.Hon Christopher Finlayson: Translate it.JAN LOGIE: For those of you who do not know this poem or your Latin this last phrase translates as “It is sweet and right to die for your country”.Hon Christopher Finlayson: Who wrote it the first time?JAN LOGIE: It was written by Wilfred Owen; that is the version I know. We need to again acknowledge those conscientious objectors in the First World War who were kidnapped by the State and sent away for that “old Lie”. Tragically we still all too often hear this or versions of this used to sell populations on the need for war. We see it in Gaza and we see it in the Ukraine. We do not see it so much in Syria but it is continuing. Many of us watch these images and read these stories with a degree of horror—those of us who do not have family there—and with incomprehension and pain for the ordinary people there.I think obviously that is right but we also need to remember that many of the soldiers too are not there by choice. They are there because of the will and the power of the leaders who do not have their bodies on the line. It is a tragedy a failure of humanity and a corruption of politics for anyone to have to die or indeed kill for their country. This failure must be avoided at all costs. We must stand up for human rights work for peace and honour those in our armed forces for their will to work for a safe world without war. Soldiers are real people—members of our communities and our families as well as being in our armed forces.Through the select committee process we heard from submitters who have been in these conflict zones and who told us of their lives being irrevocably changed by the war. At times we heard from children. Those war zones had been brought home and into their family lounges and the harm had been passed on to the next generation because rehabilitation and support services were not provided by the State to ensure healing. We also heard of years of battles to get help and of struggles for recognition—battles and struggles with the same State that sent these people into places that caused them so much harm.You do not have to believe in war to want the best support for people who have been through such horror which is why the Green Party has been disappointed that this Government has held off on the two relatively small remaining points of payment on death and portability. We would like to have seen everything that the veterans asked for delivered on. We mourn the need for this bill but wholeheartedly support it as the least our country can do to acknowledge the cost of being asked to kill another and to put your life and body on the line.