Upston LouiseHon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'm pleased to speak on behalf of the National Party as the first speaker in this debate on the New Zealand Superannuation and Veteran's Pension Legislation Amendment Bill. I will start by saying on record that National does support this piece of legislation and we support it for a couple of reasons. One of those is as the Minister says this is about making our superannuation system sustainable. Of course one of the things that National is quite surprised about when we talk about superannuation being sustainable is that the Labour Party have backed away from their earlier commitment to make the superannuation system more sustainable by progressively increasing the age of entitlement. So they have decided not to be as sustainable as they could be. But this bill of course does simplify and modernise the New Zealand superannuation and veterans pension and also saves significant costs which is why I was quite surprised—because there is a requirement for the Labour Party to consult with other political parties—that New Zealand First weren't listed on Schedule 4 in terms of being consulted and I wonder if that indicated that New Zealand First weren't in favour of this particular superannuation change that of course affected qualifying spouses. So I would be interested to hear New Zealand First's contribution on that in this debate and whether or not they support it indeed.I want to just come to a couple of the elements of this particular piece of legislation because it's a very kind of old and outdated concept in terms of the age of retirement that there has been a principal breadwinner and then at the age of retirement both partners are then seen to be retiring. So from that reason we do support this legislation. In effect it's a separating of individual entitlement versus what the spouse is entitled to. But I do also just want to put on the record a slight concern that I have around what the Labour Party's future direction might be in the Welfare Expert Advisory Group on the wider question of partners and entitlement in terms of benefits. So while we support it in this piece of legislation in its limited and quite specific state then you know we're not signalling a wider support for that whole concept of partnership to be completely removed from any welfare and social security legislation.There's a lot of constituents actually who come into the office particularly around the voluntary component of Government-administered overseas pensions. So I do think this is a very sensible and practical change. In some countries for those who might not be familiar with it people have the option of—on top of the mandatory contribution to an overseas pension scheme they are able to have a voluntary top-up of their pension scheme. So it's rather frustrating for them when they come to New Zealand to realise that basically there is a deduction by Ministry of Social Development (MSD) of both the mandatory and the voluntary component which seems to be quite unfair and that's why National does agree with the fact that the voluntary pension contribution will no longer be deducted. We of course believe that people should be encouraged to save and contribute to their own retirement and this would be a completely contradictory message if it were continued to be counted and deducted from someone's pension. Just going back to the spousal deduction I think it is an important mechanism in terms of MSD. It will be far simpler for them when they are administering this scheme that they won't have to answer as many questions not just about themselves as the applicant but about their spouse. Of course the winter energy payment will not be subject to the spousal deduction. So we do agree with this piece of legislation. We look forward to due consideration in the select committee.