Supporting the RSA

Defending the Flag

The real costs of change

Wars and the effects of wars still live with us.

New Zealand like many other nations is remembering the so called war to end all wars –World War One.

In August 2014 we remembered the start of World War One; last year we commemorated the tragic Anzac campaign at Gallipoli which some historians credit as being a time which helped define us as a nation.

Later this year we will recall the Battle of the Somme in which our troops served and in which so many died.

New Zealand troops entered the battle in mid-September 1916 and by the end of it over 2000 were dead and nearly 6000 wounded.

This is a special year too for the Royal New Zealand Returned Services Association (RSA ) because next month you celebrate 100 years since your formation when wounded soldiers returning to New Zealand from World War 1 recognised a need to provide support and comfort for service men, women and their families.

Three days after the first Anzac Day commemorations, on April 28, 1916, Captain Donald Simson oversaw a meeting of returned soldiers in Wellington that established the association.

It was Captain Simson who also suggested the idea of a badge at this conference – this badge is now one of the most recognisable symbols in New Zealand and to be sure those of you who have such a badge wear it with pride.

All the vets of World War One have passed away but that war lives on in generations who have followed.

Family stories have been uncovered, told, and retold.

We ponder what kind of a country New Zealand might have been had not so many of that generation been slaughtered.

Barely two decades later the Second World brought more sorrow to this country.

Again thousands of our service personnel gave their lives and were left to lie in lonely graves distant from their homes and loved ones.

Not many of those lucky enough to come home from World War 2 are left now but again the impact of that conflict lives with us.

While many of the memories are painful there is also a national pride that our young people were prepared to go and serve when the need was great.

New Zealand First shares in that pride of what our forebears did and we honour their memory.

We have enjoyed a close association with the RSA and we have a great empathy for your values.

We believe in acknowledging the contribution our service veterans have made – not just in the two world wars but in Korea, Malaya, Vietnam, Kuwait, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan to name just some of the countries to which our service personnel have been deployed.

New Zealand currently has 31,000 veterans of whom 11,000 come from the period after World War 2 up to the Vietnam War. 20,000 of those veterans served after Vietnam.

New Zealand First supports all military veterans who meet eligibility criteria receiving a veteran’s pension.

We support every effort that has been made to help veterans gain access to health and social services.

We support the recent initiative by the RSA to establish a relationship with the Australasian Services Care Network (ASCN), a network of providers of health and social services for those who have served or are currently serving.

We welcome this initiative in its move also to awaken awareness that the veteran is not just an elderly man or woman who served in places like Malaysia but he or she is also the younger veteran who returned physically and psychologically wounded from service in Afghanistan and needs a helping hand.

We can assure you New Zealand First will always stand beside the RSA in giving that helping hand.

We support claims by veterans and their children who have been affected by Agent Orange, and nuclear testing.

Our policy is to renew full annual government funding to RSA support services to help all veterans gain access to health and social services.

We would ensure veteran pensions maintain relativity and we would provide an additional 10 per cent to recognise their service.

These are the proactive policies New Zealand First has which we consider are a fitting recognition of the contribution our veterans have made to this country.

NZ FLAG

Whilst respecting the rights and opinions of those who have a different view we, like your national RSA, have taken a strong stand in the retention of our national flag which Mr Key and the government have worked so assiduously to abandon.

We are the only party to come out fully in support of our present flag.

New Zealand First believes abandoning our national flag is also abandoning our history.

To throw out our current flag would be abandoning those young people who died for us and let’s remember, they did not die serving under a flag that, sadly, so many foreigners think looks like a white feather on a faded washed out blue.

And it was startling to learn this week that neither the prime minister nor his government have done any work on the full cost of a flag change should it happen? Surely voters were entitled to the full knowledge of that before they cast their vote.

Even Finance Minister Bill English admitted he had no details as to the cost.

Mr Key has gone to enormous lengths to win over the New Zealand public to support his flag.

Among the propaganda he has used sports stars to recite their message which completely went against the government’s repeated statements that any campaigns would be to inform people of their options, not to promote a change.

One of the heartening features of the flag issue, however, has been the support for the existing flag by the younger generation.

It is notable that these young people seem to have more respect for our history and past than some in older generations.

UMR Research showed 72 percent of 18 to 29 year-olds preferred the current flag to the alternative.

Realising that if there was a flag change there would be all sorts of cost consequences we asked the Minister of Internal Affairs, “What would be the cost to the Crown if every valid issued New Zealand passport had to be recalled and subsequently reissued, if any?”

His answer: “Should such a widespread recall be justified, the cost could range from $0 to over $458,221,788, depending on what timeframe the recall and subsequent reissue would need to be completed.”

So what should have been his real answer, that no reissue is contemplated and that our passport would have one flag and our country a new one.

This is just one example of the work they never did when they put the issue to the public, and there are many more examples of cost possibilities that Mr Key didn’t care to mention.

Conclusion

The real disappointment about this whole flag issue is the process that was followed and that it cost the country $26 million and could cost twice that amount if there was a change. I am confident that there will not be a change and that this money has just gone down the drain.

That is money that could have been spent on more deserving projects – like our hospitals, our schools – and our RSA veterans.

ENDS

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