Veterans’ Support Amendment Bill

When we were last debating the Veterans’ Support Amendment Bill, Priyanca Radhakrishnan had nine minutes remaining to speak—should she so wish? And she does.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker, and “talofa lava” in celebration of Samoan Language Week. As you mentioned, I was interrupted in yesterday’s debate as I rose to take a call on the Veterans’ Support Amendment Bill, which is particularly exciting because it kind of sits across both my select committees in terms of veterans affairs sitting within the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee. This particular amendment, I understand—well, I’m hoping we’ll get the chance to actually look over this piece of legislation at the Social Services and Community Committee.

This is a very technical bill. It’s actually a very short bill as well. It aims to correct a drafting error in section 9 of the Veterans’ Support Act 2014. It is important that we do this quite quickly so that New Zealand veterans can actually be reassured and be provided with a certain sense of certainty that their entitlements will be paid, and also so that Veterans Affairs, which administers entitlements to our veterans, can really just get on with their work and ensure that eligible veterans get what they’re entitled to.

Just going back to where this comes from, the 2014 legislation that this particular bill will amend a portion of broadened the criteria for “qualifying operational service”. Before this, the legislation that governed this aspect was the War Pensions Act 1954. It was really narrow, and it only referred to service in war and emergencies as qualifying operational service. So the 2014 legislation broadened these criteria. It included a wide range of operational and environmental threats from the viewpoint that things have moved on and contexts change over time. The existing legislation confirms the intent, so that’s really the crux of what this amendment bill aims to do—to ensure that the policy intent matches practice and what’s actually been happening. Existing legislation confirms the intent that the 2014 legislation was for Ministers to be able to make declarations of qualifying operational service before, during, and after deployments.

Since 2015, this has actually happened, and that’s where practice has not quite matched with the policy intent of the 2014 legislation. Since 2015, Ministers have made 14 historical declarations that cover multiple deployments and various geographical areas as well. This affects, roughly, 675 veterans, their spouses, and family members, including the families of personnel who were killed in action as well. So while this may be a bill that sounds like it affects a small-ish number of people, they are people who have served on behalf of New Zealand in various deployments, and this bill will actually just ensure that they get the entitlements that the previous bill intended for them to get.

Recent advice indicates that the interpretation of that particular section, section 9, could not be stretched to provide jurisdiction and for Ministers to make declarations in respect of historical or retrospective deployments, and that would be an issue because that would mean that, going forward, these veterans and their spouses and families may not then get the entitlements that they should get.

So it’s a very narrow amendment bill. It, basically, just amends a drafting error. My final point that I make in this short call is that as I was reading this bill it took me back to the Social Security (Winter Energy Payment) Amendment Bill, which our select committee looked at as well. I went back to the Hansard and saw that members opposite—that was also a bill that amended a drafting error very similar to this. This drafting error was a few years ago, might I add, but because that fell within the purview of this Government, the kinds of speeches that members opposite gave about this “shoddy” process—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order!

—was completely out of order. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

Kia orana to you, Madam Assistant Speaker. Talofa lava to all who are celebrating Samoan Language Week this week, and could I particularly acknowledge the Minister for Pacific Peoples, the Hon Aupito William Sio. He’s not quite as sartorially splendid as he was yesterday but still looking very delightful. Could I also say “mabuhay” to all the Filipino community throughout New Zealand and who today are here in Parliament in large numbers to celebrate the maiden statement of my very fine new colleague, Paulo Garcia. We are delighted to welcome him to our caucus, and we are delighted to welcome his many supporters to our House tonight.

As the previous speaker, Priyanca Radhakrishnan, has just noted, this Veterans’ Support Amendment Bill was interrupted when the House rose at 10 o’clock last night. So I’d just like to reiterate one or two of the points that the Minister made in summarising the purpose of the Act, and at the outset, can I acknowledge the Minister of Defence and Minister for Veterans. I had the pleasure of accompanying him on a trip to the Middle East and South Sudan earlier this year. I know that he is a very strong supporter of all of our veterans and, indeed, of all of our existing serving personnel both here and overseas. I fully support him in that. I also acknowledge his predecessor as Minister of Defence, the Hon Mark Mitchell, who’s in the House, who, I know, has the same level of support, as indeed does my colleague from across the river in Hamilton, the Hon David Bennett, who was the previous Minister for Veterans’ Affairs. I think every member of this House, in fact, would share a desire to do our very best by our veterans.

The point of the Act, of course, is to correct a drafting error, as has just been noted by the previous speaker. When the House passed this legislation in 2014, its purpose was quite clearly to do the right thing by veterans who—really, time had overtaken the appropriateness of the legislation, and it was important to note that not all deployments now necessarily involve active conflict but nevertheless do put our serving personnel into considerable danger. I’m sure that we would all wish to ensure that the purpose of the Act—and I was in the House in 2014 when it was passed, and I think was passed unanimously?

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: Yes, it was.

Another previous Minister, the Hon Michael Woodhouse, can confirm to me yes, it was passed unanimously, and therefore I have no doubt that we’ll have the same degree of unanimity in passing this amending legislation to correct the drafting error.

I note that it will have a truncated process. That’s been agreed by all parties through the Business Committee. Simon O’Connor, the chair of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, when speaking in the House last night expressed some regret that the bill will not be coming to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, of which he is the chair and I’m the deputy chair, but I understand the reason for that is because veterans don’t actually come under the purview of that particular committee. Nevertheless, our committee will be fully supportive of seeing the bill go through.

The important thing for members who may not have been here last night and members of the public is that section 9 of the Veterans’ Support Act authorises the responsible Minister to declare that a deployment of members of the Defence Force may be considered as qualifying operational service for the purposes of the Act. The previous Act referred only to service in war or emergencies, and so the new legislation changed the criteria for “qualifying operational service”, and the criteria that are now in force cover a broad range of operational and environmental threats, including non-State actors and security forces. Declarations are made on the basis of advice provided to the Minister by the Chief of Defence Force in a report assessing the threats posed to members of the deployment, and those with qualifying operational service have a number of entitlements for support under the Act.

As I said, I was in the House when this legislation was passed back in 2014, and I have no doubt that that new legislation was intended to give access to entitlements to all New Zealand veterans who’d served in deployments where they’d been at risk of serious harm. Indeed, that is how the Act has, in good faith, been interpreted in the years since its passage. It has only been in recent times that a drafting error has been discovered, and it is important that we rectify that error as quickly as possible to ensure that those who the House always intended should enjoy the benefits of this legislation are not unfairly penalised and do not find themselves missing out simply because of an administrative or drafting oversight.

So, as the National Party’s spokesperson for veterans affairs, the Hon Maggie Barry, indicated when she spoke last night, the National Party is strongly in support of this bill. We wish to renew our absolute support for all our veterans who have served us in conflict, who have served us with such distinction. They really are held in the highest regard and, again, when I travelled with the Hon Ron Mark earlier this year, I saw at first-hand members of defence forces from many other countries around the world speaking so highly about the New Zealanders with whom they mixed. It made me incredibly proud to be a New Zealander. It made me incredibly proud of the considerable contribution New Zealand has played to the resolution of some of the major conflicts over the last couple of centuries but also, in more recent times, to the peacekeeping efforts and the various other deployments with which we are engaged around the world. So I’ve closed by just saying that the National Party will do everything we can to facilitate the rapid passage of this rectifying amendment bill through the House, and I commend the Minister for bringing it to our attention.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of the Green Party to put on record again our support for this piece of legislation. I will be right upfront—I’m not going to fill the full 10 minutes. This is about fixing a drafting error and we all, I understand, are supporting this bill across the House. I did speak to the original legislation and I will, as we go into this debate, recall some of the submissions from family members of veterans, who told harrowing stories of the impact of war on their dads, in particular—they were the stories I remember. We got to see the intergenerational impact of fathers not accessing the support that they needed to deal with the trauma of their experience in conflict.

The initial legislation sought to put in place a framework to ensure that all of the people who are sent off into conflict zones by this House are properly supported to be able to deal with the huge consequences of that, because we can’t kid ourselves that war does not have a profound impact on the people there. So this piece of legislation is fixing the drafting error. The initial intent of the legislation was to enable the Minister to declare a deployment as qualifying operational service for that support for veterans at any time before, during, or after a deployment occurred. That’s how it’s been operating for the last five years, but in the process of reviewing the policies, I understand, it was discovered that in actual fact, technically, there wasn’t the ability to extend that coverage to veterans who had been deployed before 2014. That makes no sense and doesn’t match the intent of the original legislation.

So it’s great that we’re all standing in the House and, hopefully, with short speeches so we can speed this through to make sure those veterans have the full support of our law.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and take a call on the Veterans’ Support Amendment Bill. I’d like to start by acknowledging the service of all those past and present members of the New Zealand Defence Force, especially those who have been overseas on operational deployments.

Now, this is an important piece of legislation to make sure that we are enabling those operationally deployed veterans to come back and to have the right support in place—the best support we can offer—to acknowledge the massive contribution that they have made. For any of those men and women who have served New Zealand in operational deployments, it is a massive sacrifice for them and for their families, and it is absolutely appropriate that we put in place the best support network we can to enable them to reintegrate as successfully as possible.

I acknowledge Jan Logie’s comments around some of the complexities and the horror that can be faced by those people in what they’re seeing and experiencing offshore and how that can impact them when they come back to civilian life and try to reintegrate into their everyday environments, not just for them but actually for their families as well, and that’s a critical part of it. Any time those soldiers are heading offshore, those Defence Force personnel, the family left behind—it has an impact on them as well. They’re constantly wondering are their loved ones safe, are they not, what will happen to them, what changes will they experience, and how will that impact on the family and the community when they come back?

So it’s absolutely appropriate that we ensure these rules are tight, and that’s why this amendment, which is looking to tighten up what was, effectively, a drafting error—look, a number of decisions have been made on the basis of that, acting in good faith that the rules as they had been put in place would enable those decisions to be made by the Minister and to be enacted accordingly. Indeed, I think it would be a stretch to suggest that that might be questioned, and I’d be looking unfavourably upon anyone who did question whether those service entitlements were appropriate. But it is absolutely essential that we do tidy that up. This has come to light and it’s appropriate that we address that to just clear away any potential concerns in that space in terms of allowing those deployments before that date—where they were in place at the time or active at the time, or indeed had ceased prior to that date—to be captured under section 9 as well.

I think it’s important, too, to specify here under clause 5 in the bill that the validation and declarations made in respect of certain deployments are not being invalidated for those ones that have already been made—and there are quite a number made over the years since 2015: Iraq, Sinai, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and many others—and that those declarations that were made should now continue to be considered valid as a result of this law change. This final section does indeed capture that to remove any doubt around the validity of those previous decisions that had been made as well.

So, look, I don’t want to delay this any more. I’ve always been a proponent of ensuring that legislation, at every opportunity possible, goes through a full and robust process. It’s important to get that right, to give people the opportunity to engage, for them to have confidence in what we’re doing here in the House. This situation, of course, it’s a pretty minor technical change, although the implications can be significant. There’s broad agreement, good visibility, and transparency on what we’re doing, so I’m much more relaxed with expediting this process somewhat to ensure this comes into force as rapidly as possible.

So, on that note, I’d like to end my contribution and just wrap up again by reiterating my thanks to all those men and women who have served their country on operational deployments and, indeed, those who have been members of the New Zealand Defence Force as well. Thank you for their service. It is much appreciated.

I understand this is a split call. I call the Hon Peeni Henare—five minutes.

Tēnā koe, Madam Assistant Speaker. Thank you for this opportunity to contribute to a very important bill.

The bill has already been well canvassed, and I hope that my short contribution doesn’t detract from the support from the entire House for our armed services, those who have served and those who are still currently serving. So I end my contribution by saying well done to the Minister, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Assistant Speaker, and thanks, too, to other members of the House who’ve spoken already in support of the bill, and it’s heartening to see that support across the House appears to be forthcoming, and I acknowledge the Minister with us today.

It’s an easy matter to support a piece of legislation that includes the words “veterans” and “support” in it. That’s certainly a good start, in combination—and please allow me to join others in thanking, for their service, those who have served in the past, do so in the present, and will do in the future as well.

If you’ll indulge me for a moment, Madam Assistant Speaker, just to reference within my electorate of Helensville the major New Zealand Defence Force facility there—RNZAF base at Whenuapai is about to have a change of command, and I thank the base commander Group Captain DJ Hunt for his service.

We’ve been talking about a drafting shortfall. Of course, to err is human and to forgive divine. The act of forgiveness, I think in this case, is pretty easy when there’s been no intention of any sort of political partisan gain in terms of having the original legislative process passing through. Indeed, the fact that this is supported in a non-partisan manner across the House, I think, has contributed to a generous spirit by all to simply move forward and do the right things by our veterans.

We’ve had reference already to the fact that the legislation prior to the 2014 Act had talked about war and emergencies as opposed to operational service more widely, and the need for that good bit of work to take place, and I acknowledge the previous Minister, Michael Woodhouse, for his work in that, along with other colleagues of the previous Government.

Of course, the intention that the responsible Minister would be able to make declarations of qualifying service is an intention that needs to be met by the legislation itself for the aid of clarity, for the aid of certainty, and for enabling interpretation to be correct and in accordance with the letter of the law. So it is that we are ensuring that we have not only a strong indication about the types of deployments that would enable a serviceman or a servicewoman to qualify but, in fact, that that would be readily apparent to all concerned, and that, of course, is the point of the exercise.

I don’t need to take my full allotment, even within this split call, and delay much further. But I’ll just note before I do resume my seat that there is a retrospective element in the legislation whereby declaration can be made by the Minister, regardless of whether the deployment began before or after the commencement of this Act. Retrospectivity in legislation tends to be frowned upon when it’s in the realm of criminal law and when it’s to the detriment of those who are most directly affected. Neither of those applies here. It’s perfectly appropriate in constitutional terms, and, I think, as a matter of fairness more generally. So what we’re left with in terms of considering the legislation before us is the test that the Minister, from time to time, will apply, which is whether there’s been a significant risk of harm in considering whether any particular employment is qualifying or not. That seems, to me, pretty good as a test, but no doubt the select committee will consider that, albeit in a reasonably truncated way, and, hopefully, throughout the process a good, constructive approach will continue to be taken, and we will see its passage in due course. Thank you.

Madam Assistant Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to take a brief call on the Veterans’ Support Amendment Bill. I’d like to begin my contribution by acknowledging the Minister for Veterans, the Hon Ron Mark. As I travel around the country and I speak to veterans, the Minister is always spoken of in a very high regard, and the point that they raise is the fact that the Minister has served in the New Zealand armed forces. The veterans appreciate that because they know they have someone as their Minister who can relate and who has served, and I’d just like to acknowledge that fact. I think it certainly is seen as a very important fact.

I’d like to thank the Minister for his service to our country, and I’d like to lead on from there to thank all of those veterans for their service to our country. My father-in-law fought in Malaya, Borneo, and Vietnam, and it was certainly a difficult time for him as he served over there. For him to have the support that he requires, as he’s now in his 70s, is absolutely vital, and this piece of legislation ensures that that support is there for him and also for other veterans.

We have heard from a number of speakers the fact that it’s simply around correcting a drafting error, and that’s true, but it’s important that we don’t belittle that, because correcting this drafting error provides certainty to those veterans for the support that they need. It’s important that we do this quickly so that New Zealand veterans can have that sense of certainty around their entitlements and around that support, and I’d like acknowledge the Minister for his leadership on this. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker, and I’d like to follow those words with our gratitude to the Minister for Veterans as well. I think he’s done an excellent job on this legislation and has been very helpful in bringing all sides of the House together on something that everyone would support anyway, but I think that the way he’s done it has been very good, so good kudos to the Minister for his good work.

Just joining with all other members of Parliament here in acknowledging the veterans of our country, we have to just look in this debating chamber and just look around at the names that are on the walls. Anybody that comes into this Chamber will see those names of those battles and will remember the veterans that made it possible for us to have democracy in this country so that we can live in a free, open community that values the independent rights of all individuals and communities. I think that’s something we never forget every day when we sit in this room, and this gives us the ability to publicly acknowledge and thank those veterans out there and their families, who have served and will continue to serve this great country, for their work and their sacrifice and their belief in what we all stand for and in what we can be. So I think everybody joins together in acknowledging them and thanking them for their service.

Unfortunately, though, when the Veterans’ Support Act was done in 2014, it appears an error was made, and it is an error that has sort of been covered up, I guess, by the ability to just do it through ministerial discretion. But at some point it’s come to the position now that we need to fix it through legislation so that that error in writing is not something that actually could limit anybody’s ability to get the services that they deserve and would desire. So that’s why you’re seeing universal support within the House, because it is something in the best interests of our veterans and our communities as a whole.

I would also like to just encourage the Minister—and I know he’s working on this—in regard to our Afghan interpreters. They, essentially, don’t get some of the support that other veterans do. I think that that is probably an error that has happened in our system in the past, and I know the Minister’s working hard to sort that out. I’d just like to wish him all the best in that and to let him know that I believe that you would have support in the House for that, as well, if you were to bring that forward, and you probably don’t even need to bring that forward in legislation. But you might have to, and if you do, I think there would be pretty much universal support for that as well, because those Afghan interpreters—and as Jamie Strange and I know, in Hamilton, there are a number—have served this country very well, as well. They deserve that recognition and support, and we look forward to them getting that formally in the near future, under this Minister.

So I’d just like to thank all those veterans, once again, and their families. I’d like to thank the Minister and the Parliament for coming together to make sure that this bill goes through this House in a quick manner but also a respectful manner, which gives us the ability to, once again, acknowledge the great contribution many people have made to this country. Thank you.

As a member of the very hard-working Social Services and Community Committee, which will be receiving this bill, it gives me great pleasure to be the final speaker in this first reading. I look forward to helping this bill transition through our committee and through this House.

As I’ve looked through some of the criteria here, I think it’s important to say that one thing has been left out by a few of the speakers. I’m not saying that to be critical in any way, but an important part of that is that this enables New Zealanders who have served overseas to receive support in services if they have been injured or made ill because of what they have done for their country. I think that’s a very important part.

My experience in police is that when these overseas deployments came up, there was generally a line-up of people who were very keen to go. We read our history and find out that even in those terrible wars, World War I and World War II, actually, there were many people who did volunteer and were very keen to go and head away, and it was only when they came back that the impacts of that service were really felt, and that was where we had our absolutely essential and great work done by the RSAs. However, as I read through the deployments that are going to be part of this—you know, places like South Sudan, Sudan itself, the Sinai Peninsula, Afghanistan, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Solomon Islands, Bougainville, Haiti, Yugoslavia, Cambodia, Angola—most of them are hardly places that one puts on one’s list to be having holidays in when planning one’s vacation. They are all places that even though those members, and my own members, who were going and being deployed to some of those places lined up and were very keen to go, it was in the families, when they came back, where often the issues raised themselves when they came home. It was not just the physical injuries—what we’d call the below-the-neck injuries—but also those other injuries.

So this piece of legislation enables those families of those members who were part of those deployments to ensure that they were assisted and were—not rewarded, and it was never seen as an reward—acknowledged and given the necessary assistance. So fixing this piece of legislation to ensure those smaller ones—and like all those, it’s often the forgotten theatres of war, theatres of activity, that become the most important part, that cause the issues, rather than those that are well traversed in the media, social media, and even in movies and entertainment later on.

So this is a piece of legislation that I’m looking forward to being part of, as I say, shepherding through the process through the Social Services and Community Committee. I have no hesitation in commending this bill to the House.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Social Services and Community Committee.

I move that the bill be reported to the House by—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Could you give me the name of the bill please? Please start again.

I move, That the Veterans’ Support Amendment Bill be reported back to the House by 12 June 2019 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 191, 193, and 194(1)(b) and (c).

The select committee process is important. I want to make sure that our veterans who want to comment on this proposed amendment will have the opportunity to do so. However, I am proposing that the time that the committee has to consider the bill be very brief. There are three primary reasons for this. Firstly, passing the bill quickly will allow veterans who are already receiving support under the 14 retrospective declarations to date to have certainty that their entitlements will continue uninterrupted, as has always been intended. Secondly, the longer the Act is left unamended, the longer many of those who it was intended to benefit won’t be able to access support; this would perpetuate inequities between the veterans who have all served their country in high-risk situations. Finally, this is a short and simple piece of legislation for the select committee to consider. I thank the House. Madam Assistant Speaker, I thank you very much.

Motion agreed to.