Shearer David: Veterans’ Support Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShearer David: Veterans’ Support Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 22 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19319. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert):I just want to take a quick call on Part 6 of the Veterans’ Support Bill because this is the critical point of difference. There is an enormous tome of a new piece of legislation here 99 percent of which we agree with. It is the 1 percent that we do not agree with. Before I touch on that I want to just make reference to Te Ururoa Flavell’s contribution a bit earlier. He made the big play that in his caucus they argued for a long time about this. Well for God’s sake if you are going to do it get the facts right. Get the facts in front of you so you are actually able to argue about what is real rather than what you are told. What he has done is to do himself a huge disservice because not only has he argued about the wrong things but he is standing up there and stating facts that are simply not right and is basing his decision not to support this lump-sum payment on that.This is about an expenditure of $7.4 million—$7.4 million so that on the death of our veterans their families can receive a lump-sum payment of just $5700. If anybody has had to prepare for a funeral you will know that that will cover the costs of only an ordinary funeral. This is not extravagant but it is a gesture to the families who have put up with so much while their loved ones—normally their fathers or their sons or whatever—have been offshore and serving. This is $5700 per veteran an annual cost of $7.4 million.When you go back and you look at some of the expenditure that this Government has committed this country to you see that it has given $30 million to Rio Tinto. It has given $30 million to Rio Tinto. It has given $150 million to a bunch of fat-cat lawyers to sell off our assets—$150 million. That could have taken us through for the next 15 or 20 years at that rate. You ask yourself whether our veterans are worth that. Of course they are—of course they are. This is wrong. It is penny-pinching. It is just simply not good enough when the Government has come to the table on the other issues that we disagreed on just a few weeks ago but it has left this out. We know that the RSAs support this. They support the lump-sum payment. They tell us that when we go around and speak to them. We know that this is what the Law Commission recommended. It is not what Labour recommended; it is what the Law Commission recommended. We believe that both the Law Commission and the Returned and Services’ Association are absolutely right—absolutely right. This is a very small amount of money that will go an enormously long way particularly for those World War II veterans who are diminishing week by week.I just hope that the Government—I doubt that it will but nevertheless I hope—sees fit to pass this as it has the other aspects of this bill. As I say 99 percent of this bill we agree on but that 1 percent is important. That 1 percent is important and it will go a long way for the families of those veterans who serve us so well overseas. Thank you.