General Updates

Select Committee Report on the Veteran Support Act 2014 Amend 2

Well, no surprises here. The Government again has put many Veterans back in their boxes with little or no acknowledgement.

The RNZNCA is very disturbed at the Select Committees findings in their report that the issue of many or our VETERANS is outside the scope of the amendment. The Select Committee is happy that Servicemen and women who joined before 1 Apr 1974 can now be known as Veterans but their lack of acknowledgement and respect in the report is evidence that they also are happy that these veterans fall outside of the VSA for any recognition of their Service. Lip-Service at its BEST!!

The report can be read in its entirety by clicking HERE.

For those of you who do not want to read the entire report here is the paragraph with respect to Veterans and their submissions.

We received a total of 28 submissions expressing concern that the proposed change to the definition of “veteran” would not include a wider range of New Zealand Defence Force personnel. The issues raised include the service that does not qualify for support under the Act currently. These issues are outside the scope of the bill that we are considering, so we could not make recommendations in relation to these concerns. We acknowledge that this is a significant policy issue and officials have work underway on matters around this issue. We are pleased to note that this work is being done.

It would be nice to know as to who is doing this work?

6 thoughts on “Select Committee Report on the Veteran Support Act 2014 Amend 2

  • Steve Hunt

    I haven’t the time or inclination to read the full report however reading the paragraph in your post re the 28 submissions I am not at all surprised at the Select Committee’s report outcomes. Mainly because select committees do bugger all and never make commitments as they do not control the purse strings and do not wish to be held responsible for any increased costs that the government may be subjected to. So many times I have experienced courts of inquiry, government committee reports, etc and the Terms of Reference applied to these that they never get to the actual bottom/cause of the problem and nor do they come up with plausible and satisfactory outcomes.
    I apologise if I am coming across as negative, this will remain so until such time as we see proper intent and commitment, and not just lip service being paid to the service personnel that continue to serve (and those that have served) as to the duty of care that we have all supposedly been entitled to for serving our fine country.

  • Steve Hunt’s comment has hit the nail fairly and squarely on the head. Although I’m already a certified NZ veteran, I am seriously expletive deletive disgusted! From God’s lips to my ears please tell me this is all a passing five second nightmare! What the DEVIL is the use of convening a Select Committee only to learn five weeks later that the vast majority of the verbal submissions were just cannon fodder, casually cast aside and dumped in the Select Committee ‘bitbucket.’

    Quote.
    “These issues are outside the scope of the bill that we are considering, so we could not make recommendations in relation to these concerns.”
    Unquote.

    As is common practice prior to attending a Select Committee hearing those wishing to be heard are required to forward an outline of their submission to the Secretariat. If the content of a submitter’s paper doesn’t pass the Select Committee litmus test. That is, “if it is considered outside the scope of the Bill” – then, why were those personnel NOT immediately advised that their submission[s] were null and void? The people who had travelled from all corners of NZ, and at considerable cost, to attend their Select Committee hearing will be gutted. Surely one could be forgiven for thinking that this particular Select Committee hearing was just an exercise of pomp and puffery inefficacy! One major standout that has bubbled to the surface is that most Select Committee MPs are sadly lacking in ‘Essential People Management Skills.’
    Recommend course 101 – to be read in front of a mirror: “am I contributing to the solution or adding to the problem!”

  • Frank Lewis

    I am one of those who made a verbal submission to the Select Committee. I had spend many hours in researching my submission but now am totally disgusted at the way this select committee received our submissions. They just did not have a clue on what we were talking about and totally ignored all our submissions. I will not give up and will continue to fight on behalf all my shipmates on HMNZS Blackpool who were treated so disrespectfully by both NZDEF and the select committee.

    • Further to my recent comment, and this will be my last on the matter, if the aim of the recent Select Committee shenanigans on VSA Bill No. 2 is to make a mockery of Kiwi politics, perhaps someone should have pointed out we were doing that perfectly well already. One thing that is now crystal clear the Select Committee exercise has clarified the limits of my own imagination. Even when I’m waxing speculative, I have a hard time imagining a plausible outcome in which myself or indeed any right-thinking person can shed a positive light on enhancing or amending suspect policy that may well have, prior to public scrutiny, already been washed, rinsed, starched and agreed through the political ‘dark room’ dry cleaners. No further comment needed!
      It seems to me that this particular Select Committee outcome is the combination of two or more electromagnetic waveforms to form a resultant wave in which the displacement is either reinforced or cancelled in its entirety. May the power and voice of the Almighty see fit to help? Time will tell.

      • Good morning and fraternal communicators’ greetings from the UK.
        I have been monitoring this saga [for that is what in truth it is] from a distance and throughout I have tried to envisage myself in the shoes of the RNZNCA Executive Committee, a lamentable undertaking on this perverse subject. The expression BZ is regularly used, often inappropriately, but on this proverbial ongoing storyline, justly deserved for the Committee’s persistence in trying to achieve a fair resolution to an event which came to the fore many decades ago.
        To a recent posting to the RNZNCA blog submitted by Neal Catley made after Frank Rands [inter alia] expert and excellent submission to a flawed so called Select Committee intelligence gathering, fell on deaf ears I say this.
        Thank you, Sir, for your comments which sums up the outcome perfectly and pulls no punches! I would be happy to release your recent comments in my own name and I can’t give it a better endorsement. One hopes that it doesn’t get the mushroom treatment as so many other pleas submitted to this carousel which manifestly never stops long enough to allow people to take off documents posted to it to read and action, has received. I wish you well with it – you and your colleagues on the RNZNCA front benches richly deserves sincerity and praise which to date has been in very short supply. It is not only embarrassing but absolutely pathetic!
        Yours Godfrey [Jeff] Dykes: former RN WO Telegraphist.

        • Gary Houghton

          Greetings Jeff,
          Thanks for your comments and interest in the goings on of the RNZNCA.
          One question for you, does the British Houses of Parliament have a similar select committee arrangement or structure?
          If it doesn’t, and we didn’t inherit it from the Westminster System, then select committees may be a unique Kiwi thing. Possibly introduced to make the peasants feel that they had a chance to influence the business of government and have an input to the legislation that will affect their lives. Yeah, right!
          One of the outcomes of not having an upper house of parliament. The one house system does allow a government to do, or as in this case – not do, as it wishes.

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