Shearer David: Veterans’ Support Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShearer David: Veterans’ Support Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 30 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19708. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert):Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker—yes I do indeed. I just want to pick up where I left off which was where we basically agreed with this Veterans’ Support Bill which is a rewriting of the War Pensions Act 1954 which is well and truly out of date. As I was saying last night before the House rose this is something that has been long overdue—to upgrade this Act. Since 1954 it had not really been touched. The review was kicked off by Rick Barker and Phil Goff under the last Labour Government. They asked the Law Commission to look into this bill and to provide some recommendations which the Law Commission did. It consulted very widely. It talked to veterans and it talked to the RSAs around the country. It spent 2 years doing that and did a very good job. It was completely non-partisan and completely neutral and as a result of that it came up with a 280-page report with some extensive recommendations.For the most part those recommendations have been agreed to. We have been pretty happy with that. There were a number as I was saying last night that were not agreed to. We pushed pretty hard from this side of the House—and I want to acknowledge Phil Goff’s efforts here—first of all to correct an anomaly that somehow there was some means of being able to assess a disability at 52 percent. It was a long complicated piece of mathematical torture really in order to be able to come up with that 52 percent. That has now gone. The Government was reluctant to do that but it has agreed to it itself. In addition to that it has agreed that the community services card will be automatically given to our veterans because once again it was something that the Government was not willing to entertain. The Government agreed to it with pressure from this side. It also ensured that if a veteran was hospitalised even after 13 weeks their pension was not terminated. Once again the 52 percent disability assessment the community services card and ensuring that 13 weeks in hospital did not mean that they were going to lose any of their benefits were additions that on this side of the House we pushed for and after some pretty vigorous disagreement the Government agreed to them.What we are left with though which I think is miserable is that the lump-sum payment on the death of a veteran cannot be paid to that veteran’s family. That is a sum of $5800. It is not a lot of money. Over the period of time that we were looking at with the decline in the number of veterans because of the way that unfortunately people are getting older and passing away that will amount to less than $8 million a year. I can think of a lot of money that is being spent by this Government on things that are of much less value than giving the benefit to those veterans’ families—giving them something when that veteran dies. Because let us face it it is not just about the veterans who went away; it is also about their families left behind who suffered when they went. This would acknowledge that contribution that they made to New Zealand.