Auchinvole Chris: KiwiSaver Bill — In Committee 
Auchinvole Chris: KiwiSaver Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:633;Page:4925] 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National) 
: 
 Let us consider again the parts of this bill. We heard Minister Dalziel the Minister in the chair suggest that this bill is not supposed to be compulsory but compelling. Again this begs the question. If the Minister means “compulsion” but is using “compelling” as a device then it is a sham. It is not an inducement it is on the Minister’s own admission dependent on inertia. The problem with that is that if inertia does not work—and it will not work—what will come then? 
Minister Dalziel gave a personal indication of a series of recollections of her own savings habit and used the phrase “against a rainy day”. Well that used to be the philosophy then along came a previous Labour Government with Rogernomics. We were told in a business sense that stacking money away was an improper use of funds it was wasteful it should be put into assets debt levels should be lifted and we should get our money working. In my own case we used to scrimp and save as we established our own private company. We tried to avoid taking drawings in our first year’s trading to build up a reserve against a rainy day. But the emphasis on rainy days is not what we are talking about here. 
The purpose of the bill is establishing a savings habit to benefit those in retirement etc. It is about establishing a personal system of wealth accumulation. The recent inclusion of mortgage diversion the opt-out system and the holiday provision all auger ill for the success of the system. That is why so many comments are coming from this side of the Chamber. 
Let us reflect again on our actions when we were young and at the stage of building systems of wealth creation. I well recall that when I was 12—I remember being 12—I confidently put my holiday pocket money of 5 shillings on a horse being ridden by a young jockey called Lester Piggott. I was shocked to find when he did not win that I did not get my money back. I have never bet on a horse since. 
The next venture was later in life—and this one is pertinent—when I was contract milking cows in Whangarei with two of my brothers and we actually had money surplus to our requirements. 
Darren Hughes 
: Where’s this in Part 3? 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: I am coming to that. Part 3 talks about compulsory deductions. I took out a life insurance scheme that after 20 years would yield enough to buy a farm freehold. It did not take into account the various things that would happen to inflation in that time. But I guess that scheme and other schemes I have taken out since were really ways of taking compulsory deductions from my bank account. During my early married life once my insurance scheme had accumulated a reasonable nest egg it became an item to be surrendered to meet whatever need the family had at that time. 
I think the KiwiSaver Bill is weak in that direction. It does little to address the central question of savings habits. Surely it needs to be accompanied by a much wider review of tax adjustments. It needs to be accompanied by a system to address the huge private debt that currently exists. We have a fat chance of people saving when they have such debt burdens to clear and I think everybody knows that the most efficient way we can use our money is to clear our debts. People will probably always find that they are paying more interest than they would ever get for saving. 
All the time we have a Minister of Finance who feels that the country has achieved wonderful things by retiring all Government debt. I suggest that that has been at the cost of private people—a cost equivalent to their level of personal debt. If the Government had not been acting as a robber baron perhaps people may have had some money to use in discretionary saving. 
It is not just income tax it is the whole gamut of this socialist Government’s economic policy from the Resource Management Act and business compliance costs to imposed costs on councils. There seems to be an illusion on the part of the present Government—and we have heard it today—that what it is doing is acceptable to the majority of people. It bases this on the illusion—