Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Madam Speaker thank you. KiwiSaver is the kind of transformative economic change that Labour members can be proud of. Labour in Government makes big change not only for our economy in addressing a structural problem which exists with our savings rates but also makes a huge difference for the lives of working people—Simon Watts: Your leadership speeches are going to have to be better than this.ARENA WILLIAMS: —especially those people Simon Watts who are most disadvantaged throughout their working life: women takatāpui young people who don't have access to education. Those are the people who get the best thing out of KiwiSaver which is a dignified retirement—because it is universal. As my colleague the Hon Phil Twyford pointed out—and it is something I want to build on—the structural problem in our economy that the Hon Dr Michael Cullen addressed when he launched KiwiSaver in 2007 was about creating a scheme which employers and workers could buy into and make sure that they had a certainty in investing the savings they needed for their retirement for those times in their lives where they were most vulnerable to economic shocks. That's in our later lives when we've stopped working and our earning potential drops but it's also in times like when we buy our first home and we're most vulnerable to changes in interest rates because our mortgages are the biggest—like me at the moment. It's something which helps people through those tough times those shocks and it creates household resiliency. In our economy that's really important because we need resiliency not only at a household level but also at a community level and for our wider economy in this country.The changes in this bill reverse violence to the KiwiSaver scheme which was so transformational and was so important in 2007 where the National Government as Jan Logie points out under urgency made several changes to KiwiSaver as part of its wider package of personal tax cuts. They called this total remuneration package approach as something which would allow employers to essentially offset pay rises against KiwiSaver contributions. It did violence to the KiwiSaver scheme because KiwiSaver was never about making up people's total remuneration. It was about solving this big economic problem that we as New Zealanders faced in that our national savings rates are low.If I can come back to that point our national savings rates have grown somewhat in the last decades but that growth has been disguised by what is essentially growth of the savings of the top 1 percent of wealthy households in this country. And it's a trend that we see globally. That is offsetting a declining household savings rate of the lowest 90 percent—so all of us earners—in household savings rates. What that means is that we get this inequality of savings which creates over our entire economy a problem of structural inequality. We see a growth in the kind of investments which are conservative and managed through funds and banks and households don't actually have the kinds of savings which get them through those economic shocks. So ordinary people on the ground are exposed to those shocks and experience them in really significant ways where those with savings don't have that.This addresses that. Those changes which were made by the National Government in 2008 undermine that economic problem which the Hon Dr Michael Cullen solved with KiwiSaver. That's why this bill is really good because it shores up those savings and it ensures that KiwiSaver is protected for everyone into the future. Alongside the super fund those are two things which mean that all New Zealanders can look at Labour and say These guys have a track record of protecting our retirement of making sure that we in our older age are not only able to live on this universal income but that we are secure that we feel safe in our future." And that's something that I want for all kuia and kaumātua in my electorate of Manurewa.Since Labour established KiwiSaver in July 2007 New Zealanders have saved tens of billions of dollars into those retirement savings and that's important for all of us. A really positive change in the last 50 seconds that I have that I want to talk about in this Budget 2023 is the change for women's KiwiSaver because on average women have lower KiwiSaver balances and retirement income than men with parenting and the time off from the workplace representing one of the main reasons for that. The way that this Government has responded to that is we have made sure that the Government contributions continue to go into women's savings accounts during those parenting years. It will make a huge difference for women's retirement savings. Toby Moore one of the best people in this building he worked on that. It's due to that kind of work and the work of many people in this building not only MPs in this House but also the staff who make sure that this kind of revolutionary policy changes our economy for the better and makes it work for everyone. That's why I'm proud to support this member's bill the Employment Relations (Protection for Kiwisaver Members) Amendment Bill and all of the work that Labour does on KiwiSaver."