Cosgrove Clayton: Taxation (Annual Rates Trans-Tasman Savings Portability KiwiSaver and Remedial Matters) Bill — First Reading 
Cosgrove Clayton: Taxation (Annual Rates Trans-Tasman Savings Portability KiwiSaver and Remedial Matters) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:659;Page:8310] 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 As my colleague David Parker said Labour will be supporting this bill to the select committee. This is an interesting debate because it is indeed rich with irony. This is the first bill on superannuation matters that National in Government has brought to the House that is positive. The other bills that have been brought forward involved the suspension for 10 years of the pre-funding payments to the Cullen fund and pulling the rug out from under the at the time 1.2 million Kiwis who had signed up to KiwiSaver by gutting the Government contribution. Then we have this bill in the name of the Hon Peter Dunne. I note that as a member of the previous Government he supported the building of those two funds both KiwiSaver and the Cullen fund as it is colloquially known and now supports the actions taken by the current Government. But now of course we have a bill that is positive: the Taxation (Annual Rates Trans-Tasman Savings Portability KiwiSaver and Remedial Matters) Bill. I refer to the trans-Tasman portability provisions: KiwiSaver to there and Australian superannuation funds to here. Yes I agree that it is a positive outcome. 
The other irony in this debate is that we heard from Sir Roger Douglas. I pay tribute to him for putting in place under the Kirk Government a superannuation scheme on which if we had it today we might be debating in this bill the portability aspects of the legislation but we probably would not be having debates about some of the ills that Sir Roger and others have talked about in terms of people’s retirement savings and a lack of a savings culture because we would have had that fund well ahead I would have said—I think it was about a decade or 12 years ahead—of when the Australians decided they would embark on a compulsory superannuation scheme. I remember that Paul Keating as Treasurer took heaps. I think from memory it was 1987 or slightly earlier when he introduced that scheme. It took heaps but I think for only about 3 or 4 years. I worked in Australia in the mining industry for a number of years and I remember asking people about the history of superannuation because it was a new experience for me to be paying into a compulsory superannuation scheme. 
Of course for the Australians it is death taxes and superannuation—nobody cares. It is just what they do; it is the appropriate thing to do. The Howard Government fiddled with it in the mid-1990s in the same way. He pulled part of the rug. He did not pull the whole carpet and the underlay out from under people as Muldoon did in 1975 as Bolger did in the 1990s and as Shipley did. Ironically it was the current finance Minister as he was then as well I believe who cut superannuation to our superannuitants and senior citizens three times. 
Then we come to today and we face a Government that has suspended payments to the Cullen fund. It has done it all again in the typical Tory way—not only fiddled with superannuation but gutted superannuation. Bill English said there is no economic literacy. What was the exact quote? He said: “National says that borrowing to save is economic illiteracy.” That was from Bill English. He has carried on that wonderful tradition that he started in the 1990s that Muldoon started in the 1970s. Every time a National Government gets into power it guts superannuation. If the pre-funding is suspended for 10 years we will never recover from that. He has decided for political purposes to pass the cost of superannuation on to the next generation. His legacy in terms of preparing and planning for this country to have a viable savings plan is to suspend it. Ironically the Cullen fund recently made $2 billion so was it economic illiteracy as he puts it? Does he still hold the view that it is economic illiteracy to save for one’s retirement? I suspect that that will be the legacy of this Government. 
Chris Tremain 
: To borrow to save. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: If that is the case then New Zealanders with a mortgage—because I know that that member who interjects is a real estate agent—would never make any contribution to their superannuation retirement savings because they are borrowing on the other side of the ledger. They would not do that would they? It does not add up. That member on the other side is fired up. As I said before that is the history of the National Government from Muldoon to Bolger—remember it? “I won’t alter the age no ifs no buts no maybes from 60 to 65.”—to Shipley and English as it was then who cut the pension three times refused to inflation-proof it reversed all those things we did in Government reversed the lot. We set up the Cullen fund put it to 65 and then 66 percent no less of the average wage gave our elderly folk security in retirement and set out the social contract for those who are working now with an expectation of what they had to do in order to meet their retirement savings. 
Those Kiwis also stepped up to the plate 1.2 million of them and counting as they signed up to KiwiSaver to make their contribution. The Government put in the employer put in and as I say we set up the so-called Cullen fund to pre-fund superannuation. Most of that has been gutted by this Government. So this debate has a touch of irony as we have the original architect of a compulsory superannuation scheme Sir Roger Douglas in the 1970s contributing to this debate and as we have over there the man Bill English who as finance Minister aided and abetted by Jenny Shipley and in the Bolger Government was responsible for all the savage cuts to superannuation and the increase in the age. We have the irony of this being the first bill in respect of superannuation that has any positive effect that has been brought to this House by that Government—portability. 
I suspect that other speakers are right—there will be people on both sides of the Tasman who will exercise their rights to transfer their funds and will now look at this in a very positive way. I say to Peter Dunne that I wonder whether he feels irony in this debate as a person who under a Labour Government contributed very very positively and advocated very very strongly for the Cullen fund and for KiwiSaver—and I pay tribute to him for that—yet who now sits in a Government that has basically unravelled what I think he believes in most. 
I do believe he has honourable intentions in respect of these policy issues. He believed in them he backed them and he advocated for them. The sad thing is that that Minister sits in a Government that has torn them all asunder. I wonder whether he senses the note of history or irony in this debate. What this Government is doing—although this bill is positive—is basically sending a bill to the next generation to pay for their superannuation. The policy platform does not encourage savings. In fact it undermines them as the Government has ripped out and halved the Government and employer contributions and has taken away some of the incentives. Yet Kiwis will still sign up because Kiwis have worked out that they have to make some provision. 
But this is the way National has acted throughout its history since the 1970s. I know that Mr Gilmore being the fountain of knowledge on all things—and he may have done history in his undergraduate degree—will know that I am correct. If he looks up his encyclopaedias or flicks on to the Internet he will know. He could Google “Muldoon and superannuation” or “Bolger and superannuation” or “Shipley and superannuation” or “Bill English and superannuation” and he would see that every time his party got into power it did nothing but undermine pull apart and crash and burn any savings culture in this country. 
So it is with a touch of irony and history that we do deal with I think a positive bill which we will support. This is the first piece of superannuation legislation—ironically it was brought in by Peter Dunne—that does anything positive for Kiwis both in this country and on the other side of the Tasman. They will come back. Government members talk about a legacy. They had left to them a legacy of a Cullen fund making money of a KiwiSaver scheme set up with huge support from New Zealanders. A platform and a savings culture was being established and within months the new Government decided to pull the pin on it. So Bill English has lived up to his National Party roots and his legacy. He will go down in history along with Bolger Shipley and Muldoon and the others whose greatest impact on New Zealanders’ lives was to pull the rug out from under them in respect of their retirement savings.