By MSD's calculations, the migrant was a single day short of qualifying for superannuation. Photo / 123rf
By MSD's calculations, the migrant was a single day short of qualifying for superannuation. Photo / 123rf
Whether a migrant landed in New Zealand before or after midnight when he first arrived would eventually decide his fate regarding whether or not he could get superannuation.
That’s because a person must be resident in New Zealand for 3650 days, or 10 years, to qualify for the pension, and though the Indian national had been, he’d gone back to India for a holiday and became stranded there during the Covid-19 pandemic, throwing his eligibility into jeopardy.
So when the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) calculated that the migrant didn’t qualify because he was short a single day, he took his case to the Social Security Appeal Authority and won.
In the end, it came down to the wire, with the authority analysing whether the man landed in New Zealand from an international flight before or after midnight all those years ago.
The crucial timing of when the plane’s wheels hit the tarmac determined whether he’d been a resident in New Zealand for 3650 days, or 3649.
The man lodged his application for superannuation in February 2020 because by March that year, he would have been a resident of New Zealand for exactly 10 years.
However, he travelled home on March 1, 2020 and planned on being back before the end of the month.
Then the Covid pandemic hit and he was stranded in India for more than a year.
When he was finally able to return, he found that MSD, which oversees benefits such as superannuation, had rejected his pension application because he was a day short of the 10-year minimum requirement for residents.
This meant he lost a year of superannuation payments and his wife didn’t qualify for a joint pension entitlement as a younger spouse because the law changed while he was overseas.
The Covid-19 New Zealanders Stranded Overseas Support Programme did not help the man, as it applied only to people who already received a benefit, rather than giving rights to people who had not qualified due to pandemic restrictions.
The man took his case to the Social Security Appeal Authority, which hears challenges to decisions on benefits MSD has made.
“In ordinary circumstances, the day would make little difference. In this case, the issue has very significant consequences,” the authority said in its recently released decision.
At the authority, the main consideration came down to whether the man landed in New Zealand from Kuala Lumpur before or after midnight almost eight years ago, having lived in New Zealand for two years and been away on holiday.
Grey Power Association vice-president David Marshall.
MSD had calculated his total days in New Zealand on the basis that he’d touched down on February 27, 2015. However, the man remembered landing just before midnight on February 26.
If he had landed on the 26th then it would have counted as an extra day, meaning he qualified for the superannuation payments denied to him.
Due to discrepancies in border and flight records, it was unclear when exactly he’d touched down.
“Given the lack of direct evidence regarding the way the records were created, we would be very reluctant to rely on the apparently inconsistent records as accurate down to a matter of minutes,” the authority said in its decision.
“On the face of it, there was likely some manual process where human frailty may affect the precision of the four records.”
Ultimately, the authority decided it had no reason to doubt the man’s recollection that he’d landed before midnight and that in any case, New Zealand’s borders extend 12 nautical miles offshore and the plane would have crossed into its airspace well before midnight.
Grey Power vice-president David Marshall said New Zealanders would expect MSD to consider every pension application that doesn’t meet the residency minimum term.
However, he said some “flexibility” was needed when there’s some doubt or uncertainty about the precise details of a situation.
“While this one was a very tricky one to rule on, we are aware of other instances when the letter of the law was utilised by some staff, rather than the spirit of the law,” he said.
“During Covid travel disruptions, MSD played the letter of the law to stop some New Zealander’s payments of NZS [superannuation] because they had been out of the country for too long, through no fault of their own.
“This was due to flight cancellations and no spaces for quarantine. Fortunately, after lobbying from Grey Power and the Retirement Commissioner, the minister directed MSD to consider the circumstances of each applicant and to be more flexible. This resulted in many having their payments reinstated.”
In the past month, MSD announced that from July next year, the eligibility period for migrants applying for superannuation would gradually increase from the current 10 years to 20.
Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.
