RSA welcomes Law Commission’s Report for Veterans

The Royal New Zealand Returned and Services’ Association is very pleased that the Law Commission's report on the re-write of the War Pensions Act 1954 has been tabled in Parliament.

More than eighteen months ago after extensive consultation the Commission published its Issues Paper 7 “Towards a New Veterans' Entitlements Scheme”, which said that the 1954 Act was very outdated, difficult to understand, not in plain English, no longer made sense, and unclear.

The issues paper also expressed a principle that veterans who have suffered as a result of being put in harm’s way deserve to be recompensed over and above the entitlements of ordinary citizens who are not veterans. “A great deal of work has gone into the document tabled today – ‘A New Support Scheme for Veterans’,” said RNZRSA National President Robin Klitscher. “It is innovative in many respects, and there is much detail. There is also much still to be done, but it is pleasing to see that the principles expressed earlier are reflected in the report.

“We particularly welcome the Commission's concern for a better balance between compensation and rehabilitation to correct the neglect the latter seems to have suffered since the mid-1970s.”

Beyond that, said Mr Klitscher, “The RNZRSA has felt for some time that the introduction of ACC in 1974, and other changes since then, had led to significant differences in how veterans from before 1974 are treated compared with those from after 1974. The Law Commission's proposal that there needs to be two schemes to replace the single current Act bears this out,” he went on. “We also believe that war disablement pension rates have been losing their gearing to general wage movement over recent decades. Actuarial analysis confirms that re-indexing for the pre-1974 group in particular is well justified; and the Commission's recommendation that there should be 'some meaningful increase' in these rates is in line with this.”

The promise to review the legislation was contained in the 2006 Memorandum of Understanding between the Crown and the RNZRSA and the Ex-Vietnam Services Association. Many veterans are concerned about the length of time this is taking, and also that the report does not include a draft Bill as was originally intended. “A very high proportion of veterans are now in their 80's” said Mr Klitscher. “Any meaningful change requires a prompt response from the Government.”

But the issues are complicated as more and more inadequacies in the present legislation have been exposed during the process. “Given the range of serious criticisms of present law by the independent Commission, we hope that the Government will engage with veterans to give high priority to enacting new legislation at the earliest possible date,” said Mr Klitscher

“Other pretty obvious issues arise,” he continued. “One is to ensure that the promise in the MoU that the evidential standards set out in the old legislation – colloquially known as the “reverse onus of proof” – will be faithfully carried into the new law. This fundamental undertaking was reiterated by Ministers in the previous government, and it was reaffirmed in the present Government’s 2008 pre-election statement on veterans’ policy. And the Commission, too, says it is important to preserve the level of benevolence towards veterans’ claims as is in the present Act.

“Another relates to the Commission’s recommendations that support to veterans who are injured should be decided on a more prescriptive basis than the current law provides. Australia has a system of this kind, which works well. Veterans would bracket this proposal, however, with a strong caveat that the success of the Australian system depends greatly on a medical authority charged with the task of determining independently the technical content of what goes into the prescriptive instruments,” said Mr Klitscher. He added that this task would likely fall to the new “Expert Panel” also established under the MoU. “The Panel’s authority would need to be clearly established in the new law, and the Panel itself would likely need to be re-modelled including appropriate resourcing.”

“It is also good to see the Law Commission proposing that statutory recognition of the RSA movement as principal NGO advocate for veterans should be retained and improved,” said Mr Klitscher.

“We look forward to discussions with the Government on these and other points as it considers its formal response to the report; and also to detailed input to the new legislation at the Select Committee stage.”

ENDS

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