Tabuteau Fletcher: New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTabuteau Fletcher: New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 30 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4898. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): This has become quite an interesting debate tonight—Hon Members: Here comes the “Professor”.FLETCHER TABUTEAU: —quite apart from the fact that I have stood up to contribute to it by the sounds of it. What has been interesting in terms of this debate—and New Zealand First for one was grateful to hear it—is that the Minister of Finance with Supplementary Order Paper 89 there amending new section 59A under clause 7 in Part 1 wrote himself out of these decision-making processes. We rejoice in that because in our interpretation of this bill at the moment what we see is new section 59A(1A) and (1B) ensuring and reinforcing that the fund investment vehicles are actually passive investment vehicles. The debate has been interesting in that it would seem that from parts of the Committee including from members on the other side of the Chamber there that was a relaxation of control in terms of allowing these fund investment vehicles as an investment fund but that is not my interpretation and that is not New Zealand First’s interpretation of this legislation.So I put it to the Minister in the chair tonight that some clarification on this issue would be incredibly important in order to get some consensus in the Committee. We understand that at this moment there is no relaxation of controls. The fund investment vehicles are an investment vehicle and we applaud them as a tool and particularly as a means of allowing the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation to invest in New Zealand for example.It was expressly stated in the interpretation of this legislation and in the analysis of this legislation which New Zealand First wholeheartedly supports that these fund investment vehicles give the guardians an opportunity to invest in capital or actual machinery for example without—and this is the important part—taking control. That is an important distinction. The guardians to our knowledge are not taking control. So the fact that the Minister has written himself out of the decision-making process is to be very much applauded. The less the Minister—especially this Minister of Finance—has to do with the control of our New Zealand Superannuation Fund the happier New Zealand First will be.It is unfortunate that there was not some provision in the Act originally that said that the Government must contribute to the fund. As was noted previously we have forgone $11 billion in investment returns because this Government has opted out of contributing to this fund. Again Minister I would ask that in the analysis of Part 1 new section 59A in clause 7 we actually do look at that definition of control and at what the guardians are effectively now able to do. Our interpretation is such that they are not taking control of their investments which would be incredibly important because then we could easily support the Supplementary Order Paper.What we would also positively note is that the same amendment and the existing changes to the legislation will very importantly not only give them access to new investments but what is also quite significant is that it will actually lower the cost of the guardians’ participation in those investments. So not only are we now positively allowing our guardians to invest in New Zealand which we applaud but we note that with the fund investment vehicle tools we now bypass quite a convoluted process that had become and is currently quite a costly investment process for the guardians. So these tools are to be applauded certainly in that instance.Actually that is all I have got. Thank you.