Nash Stuart: New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 30 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4892. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): I would like to agree with my colleague Grant Robertson. I have come to the Chamber to speak on the bill that went through a select committee process. As Grant said on the Finance and Expenditure Committee by and large—I was on it in my first term and I am on it again—we get some contentious bills but how it works is that we work very closely together to come up with consensus. Very very rarely in my experience do we disagree on anything or put a minority report in. A lot of work goes into this because we understand how important the bills are.But we also understand that the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee is under directions from the Minister of Finance. Of course we know this. It is the reality of the situation. So again it is a most peculiar situation that the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee who is no doubt in direct communication with the Minister of Finance on a regular basis in terms of the work of the committee and the bills before the committee would not have discussed this. I am not too sure where this has come from and I suspect the Minister in the chair the Minister for Primary Industries has no idea either because he is not a finance Minister at all—Chris Bishop: Not yet.STUART NASH: I was going to be rude but no I will not go there. But maybe Mr Bishop does know this because he was in the office. But let us get back to the purpose of this. He wrote a lot of this. You probably wrote this did you not Mr Bishop? You know the reason behind this. In fact I have no doubt that Mr Bishop said to Mr English: “This is how it should be done Bill.”—wink nudge—and it was done. That is how it works is it not mate? Well done.Dr David Clark: When you’ve finished ordering those hair straighteners.STUART NASH: Ha ha! Yes exactly.The thing they do not quite understand is that there will be a reason behind this. There will be a reason behind why the Minister of Finance has said that he does not want to have ministerial approval as was set out in this. I am not too sure whether it is because he thinks there may be some sort of liability or conflict as Mr Robertson has pointed out. As we all know about the Superannuation Fund one of the fundamental principles behind it was that it was politically neutral so we did not want to have any political interference and I suspect that is why it has run so well. In fact it is just a shame that the contributions have not been put back into it because its rate of return has been astounding since the global financial crisis—around about 18 percent if I am not wrong.But the reason why this piece of legislation which is reasonably technical I suppose in nature is before the House is because the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation were in a situation where they effectively controlled an asset but they did not have control of the business entity. It has always been part of the rationale of the fund I believe that if it can invest in New Zealand assets so be it and that is a good thing. It is a way to boost our capital markets and actually control ownership of a lot of investments. In fact they have invested widely in this country. I think they invest in Z Energy and Kaingaroa Timberlands but part of the reason for this is that effectively they did not have control of the business entity itself.Where I would like to see some of this being exercised for example is this. We are selling a lot of our farmland our sensitive New Zealand assets offshore. If there is a good business model where the Superannuation Fund could actually justify the purchase of that I think that is a preferable option. In fact since 2005 when the Overseas Investment Act came into play there have been over 1000 consents for the purchase just of sensitive land that have been granted. It would be good if the Superannuation Fund was actually an investor in here as opposed to the Americans the Canadians the Chinese the Austrians and everyone else. But as has been said I am not too sure of the reason behind this Supplementary Order Paper 89 or the reason behind the changes. We really do need the Minister down here to explain these because it is a fundamental change in the way this whole thing is done and it would be good to know.But I come back to the purpose of the bill. I do not think that anyone doubts the veracity and the competence behind the guardians and the job they have done. In fact it has been fantastic and part of the reason for that is that—well I was going to say that part of the reason for that is that there has been no political interference; in fact that is not one of the reasons—they are incredibly competent and they do a magic job of doing it. But we all acknowledge that they cannot have any political interference except in very very specific circumstances which is what this bill was actually trying to put into place. But we also recognised that there were some instances where they did actually need to have a measure of control over the operating entity that they were buying into and that this was to do with the governance arrangements and in this day and age when there is a lot more focus on governance arrangements—