Estimates Debate — Vote Veterans’ Affairs - Defence

I am going to cover three main points concerning Vote Veterans’ Affairs. The first is that the community will be aware of the role that veterans played and continue to play in developing New Zealand as a nation. A seriously wounded Gallipoli veteran told his grandson that Anzac Day is a day when politicians speak fine words of the glorious dead but they always avert their gaze from the living survivors who gave them democracy. I recognised this when I was invited to the Montecillo Veterans Home and Hospital in Dunedin. It is a home for veterans who are struggling for finance to be relocated. Did the local Government MP support them? No. Who pushed the issues to get them to where they are today? One guess—it was New Zealand First.

The second point I would like to refer to is that the veterans’ perspective is considered as part of Government decision-making on issues that impact on veterans’ lives. A mere apology, no matter how sincere, from the State is simply not enough to redress the gross injustices that have been built up over a number of years, or discrimination against the New Zealand Viet Nam veterans. My appeal to the Government is this: will this Government rectify the misdemeanours that have taken place in reference to the discrimination against our Viet Nam veterans and their families; if not, why not?

For more than 30 years successive Governments have salted the wounds of poisoned veterans and their families. Two Government reports, one ordered by National and the other by Labour, pooh-poohed the veterans’ claims that they were dying after serving their country. No one wanted to know about the chronic disabling illnesses afflicting veterans and their genetically harmed children, who were dismissed as a statistical blip. If one dithers for long enough the problem usually dies, but the legacy of Agent Orange will haunt us long after the last-affected veteran has perished.

The Agent Orange issue needs putting to rest. Allegations that New Zealand soldiers in Viet Nam were exposed to the defoliant and have suffered severe repercussions have been current for some three decades, and no Government has stepped forward to sort this out. All of a sudden, when there is to be an election, we hear promises about what parties would do with the veterans. This is what the veterans have said: “The bidding by the political parties for veterans’ votes is as distasteful as the grandstanding that now disfigures every military celebration in the calendar.” The Press article continued: “It is difficult not to be moved. The stonewalling the Vietnam veterans have been subject to should not have happened to men who risked their lives for their country—a conclusion that stands even in the face of the fact that the war they fought was controversial and bitterly opposed by many New Zealanders.”

When troops returned from Viet Nam they were ordered to wear civilian dress and to turn up in the dark. Who are the people who opposed them and attacked them? A greater number repeatedly re-elected the Government that deployed the troops. 161 Battery fired the first shot on 16 July 1965. Three months before they were deployed, the Holyoake Government—and Holyoake was the Prime Minister—allowed it to happen. Why are our veterans being treated in such a manner, when we enjoy the freedom that resulted from what they did?

Vote agreed to.

Vote Veterans’ Affairs - Social Development agreed to.

Vote Defence agreed to.

Vote Defence Force agreed to.

Vote Tourism agreed to.

Vote Treaty Negotiations