Russell DeborahHon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour): The House is in somewhat—well not even furious but just solid agreement on this bill that it is a good bill and that it should be passed into law. I do want to remind the House of just some of the features of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. I want to remind the House that for a long time it had and still continues to have a nickname. It's known as the Cullen fund and that is because it was set up originally by Michael Cullen when he was the Minister of Finance in order to ensure that we had sufficient funds not to pay all of New Zealand's superannuation costs in the future but really to smooth out the cost of New Zealand superannuation and in particular to deal with what we think will be the peak years of demand on New Zealand superannuation when it has the largest impost on our Budget each year.Now at the moment New Zealand superannuation costs about $19 billion a year. That amount is predicted to go up and it will go up not just in absolute terms but as a proportion of the Budget each year. If we are to stick with universal superannuation which has a huge number of benefits and if we are to retain it at age 65—which is possibly not so important for people here in this House where we do a job sitting at a desk and giving speeches and engaging in meetings but it's very very important for people whose bodies are exhausted by physical labour—we need to find some way to fund superannuation out into the future and that is what the Cullen fund helps to do. It was set up by Sir Michael Cullen and it has earned a substantial return a return that was alas forgone in the years when the previous National Government decided not to keep on putting funds into the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. However the fund started again after the election of the Labour Government in 2017 and it now does control about $70 billion worth of assets. But the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation are looking for higher returns. They are looking for ways to ensure that we continue to earn good returns on the funds that are invested and that is why it is now appropriate to enable them to take controlling interest in some entities and this is precisely what this bill does.The interesting thing is that the former Minister of Finance Grant Robertson who got this particular piece of legislation going—when he was getting it under way he consulted Sir Michael some time before Sir Michael died about whether or not this was something that Sir Michael had had in his vision for the fund. Sir Michael did say that actually it was probably about time that the range of investments that the Guardians could make was actually expanded and the reason for expanding it is primarily to ensure that the Guardians can earn a better return on the fund. It's not to make particular investments because they happen to suit someone else here in New Zealand because they might build a bit of infrastructure or they might create a route to market or whatever. It's to ensure that the Superannuation Fund itself earns a decent return. That's the objective of the Superannuation Fund. So this bill simply enables all that. It enables the Guardians to earn a greater return. It is a good bill. It was started by the Labour Government before the previous election. It has been picked up and continued by the National - ACT - New Zealand First Government. It is a bill with which we all agree and I don't think there's any further need to debate it. I commend this bill to the House.