Nash Stuart: New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill Taxation (New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income) Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill Taxation (New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income) Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 20 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7376. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): That was an interesting speech by the Greens and I do not really understand why they are not backing this legislation but I am pleased that Jan Logie is so set in her principles. No doubt she does not own an Apple iPhone or an iPad she does not drink at Starbucks she does not use Microsoft and I have no doubt that she does not use Facebook because these are just several examples of companies that maximise the global tax structure—at the moment—to minimise their tax. One thing I would say to Jan is that the Caribbean itself is not known for dodgy tax deals; companies choose to locate there at this point in time.I am the first to agree that base erosion profit-shifting tax structures are bad. I am the first to agree that we need to do some work around this and I know that the Government itself is doing a lot of work with the OECD to put laws in place or to limit the opportunity for companies to engage in tax activity that is not in the best interests of the country—put it that way. But we cannot be too high and mighty about this. The New Zealand Superannuation Fund has a substantial investment in Apple.What I would hope—it is not a hope; I know—is that the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation are some of the smartest men and women in this country and what they look at when they look at an investment is the return that it is providing the risk it gives and all these other variables. I do not expect them to have a look at the tax structures that these organisations are putting in place and question the viability of those tax structures. What I would expect is that these guardians would have faith in the governance structures and the chief executive officer structures and the investment policies of these organisations to choose either to invest or not. So I do not think we can be too high and mighty about this especially when as a country we are doing a lot of work to mitigate this.I just need to clarify a couple of things that Mr Bishop and Mr Ross have said. This is not like borrowing from the credit card to invest in the stock market. When borrowing off your credit card you pay 18 percent interest and if you are lucky you might make 6 or 8 percent off the stock market. Borrowing at the rate that the Government can gives you about 4.5 percent and you get a return on average of about 10 percent. It is not a good analogy and it is slightly disingenuous and perhaps it just shows that maybe it should have put a couple of the economic speakers up on this legislation because they might know what they are talking about.But Labour does support the legislation arising from the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill. The main reason is that investment basically is about managing risk and generally the higher the risk the greater the return—that is sort of Economics and Finance 101—but there are innovative ways to manage the risk while maximising returns and this is one of these. The fund investment vehicles or “FIVs” as they are called are about managing the risk and it is about allowing the guardians to be innovative in the way that they take our taxpayer money and invest it with an ability and a mandate to protect our future—to protect the Government’s fiscal position. We all know that there is $29 billion in this; it should be a lot more but that is just the way it is. Anything that allows greater returns minimises risk and potentially lowers operational costs for the New Zealand Superannuation Fund is something we should actually support because that is in the best interests of all New Zealanders.I was not on the select committee when the original bill went through it; I was taking a sabbatical from Parliament. But I have had a look through the papers and I do not think I would have done—well I know for a fact that I would have done nothing different and would have not put forward any other arguments aside from the ones that the Labour team put forward and the select committee accepted.One thing I would say is that there is a fantastic book called Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk. It is by a chap called Peter Bernstein. I would recommend that the members opposite read it. It is about how we manage risk. The reason it is called Against the Gods is that no matter how smart classical cultures were they always believed that when things went wrong it was the fault of the gods. It was not until the last couple of hundred years that the modern economy developed tools to manage these risks. We do not blame the gods when things go wrong—there are other things we can blame—and we have the tools now as mentioned to minimise that risk and maximise returns. In fact Peter Bernstein actually believes that this is the foundation of the modern economy. So I agree 100 percent that we should allow our Superannuation Fund to take advantage of any tools that allow the guardians of the fund to minimise that risk and maximise that return for all New Zealanders. Thank you very much.