Donald Rod: New Zealand Superannuation Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Donald Rod: New Zealand Superannuation Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
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ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I would like to confirm the Green Party’s support for the New Zealand Superannuation Amendment Bill. I thank my colleague Deborah Coddington for highlighting the Greens’ minority report that has been included in the commentary on the bill. Although we support this bill in a general sense we still have some specific concerns about its contents and we still have major concerns about the legislation that it will be incorporated into. 
I will address the minority report first. It is our contention that the Retirement Commissioner should be an independent Crown entity rather than an autonomous Crown entity. Our reason is simply that retirement income as Deborah Coddington said and I acknowledge the point she made should not be a political football and that therefore the commissioner needs to have as much independence as possible in carrying out his or her functions. Making the commissioner an autonomous Crown entity may sound nice but it still means that the commissioner must have regard to Government policy. That constrains the commissioner in his or her broader functions. I wish that the Government had accepted our proposal on that matter and indeed had listened to the commissioner herself. She was very clear during the hearings that it would be her preference to be an independent Crown entity rather than an autonomous Crown entity. 
Unfortunately it is outside the scope of the bill to make that change because section 82(3) in new Part 4 inserted by clause 6 states that the commissioner is a Crown entity for the purposes of the Public Finance Act. That means that it is not within the scope of this bill to determine what type of Crown entity the commissioner should be. But we make the point and we hope that it will be noted in the future. 
We also make the point that the name of the principal Act is now inappropriate and should be changed. We are pleased to see that although the Government has not gone as far as the unanimous select committee recommendation the principal Act will be renamed the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Act. It is pleasing to see that the Minister has introduced a Supplementary Order Paper to acknowledge that retirement income should now become part of the principal Act. 
The other major concession of course is that having taken out the periodic reviews from the bill for reasons that are unfathomable given that the periodic review group recommended that the reviews should be more frequent than 6-yearly not abolished altogether it is pleasing to see that the bill as reported back now provides for a 3-yearly reporting process. That is important. The reason for that importance was highlighted by the Retirement Commissioner herself in her submission. She highlighted the fact that a lot of things can change over a 6-year period. A 3-year period would be a much more appropriate time frame in which to carry out the sorts of reviews that are needed and there needs to be a college of experts representatives of employers’ unions and the finance industry and officials who contribute to retirement income policies by monitoring the effect of the existing policies and recommending changes to them. It is good to see that there is now an explicit requirement for the commissioner to do that and that it is at a level of frequency that I think is appropriate to the changing times. 
Speaking of changing times it is clearly election season because New Zealand First is again exploiting the vulnerability of elderly voters with Winston Peters making promises to the elderly that he would not be able to keep if he did become a member of the next Government. The Green Party position on retirement income is clear. We signed up to Part 1 of the principal Act which is the commitment to superannuation being set at 65 percent of the average ordinary-time net wage for a couple and 60 percent for a single person. We recognise that that level of income is not a feast but neither is it a famine. It is adequate certainly if someone has a freehold home at the point of retirement or is living in State housing or public sector housing. I acknowledge that there are real problems for people who are still renting at that age and that is a challenge we face but it is not one that I think can be solved by increasing the level of superannuation. 
I have to say without wishing to offend any retired people or those who are approaching retirement that a responsible Government has to weigh up many demands on the fiscal purse. One that I want to give high priority to and that the Green Party is strongly committed to is the addressing of child poverty in this country. Without wanting pensioners to go without I certainly do not want to see any young person growing up in poverty. Too many do right now notwithstanding the recently announced Working for Families package which will at best cut child poverty in half. That still leaves us with a very sad indictment hanging over our heads. 
The Green Party is also committed to an overall tax cut on the first $5000 of income. That income would be tax-free as part of a package of introducing a suite of eco-taxes. That would certainly help to increase the amount of money in the pockets of all elderly people—by approximately $15 per week. We are also committed to reducing the cost of living for elderly people through policies such as more public transport that is fast affordable and efficient support for people to install solar water heaters in their homes and to insulate their homes better so that they are more healthy and other environmental initiatives that have good social equity outcomes. 
That is why the Green Party does not support and continues to oppose the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. We believe that the capital the Government is currently investing on the overseas share market through that fund is desperately needed in New Zealand. The fund may now be making a profit and it has recovered some of its early losses but that is still not an excuse for putting our taxes on the foreign sharemarket. That money should be going to the New Zealand economy and society in order to future-proof our economy and invest in productivity in the sorts of projects I was talking about: public transport solar water heating insulation and wind power. 
We also need to be investing more in public health because if we do not tackle that issue now it will be a time bomb we will have to face. Costs will balloon if we do not address issues such as lack of exercise and poor diet. We can already see that with the levels of obesity type 2 diabetes and so forth. 
We also need to invest a lot more in our young people. If we want to be looked after in our old age then our generation of parliamentarians needs to make sure that the young people who will be earning the wealth when we retire are as productive as they can be. That means investing in them while they are studying providing them with a taxpayer-funded tertiary education and not burdening them with massive student loans when they leave university so that they are in a position to raise the money for a deposit on their first home and are not themselves faced with still renting a property when they retire whilst also saying that the level of superannuation is inadequate. 
So the policies of the Greens are very much focused on preventing problems rather than seeking cures for them which is why we did not support Part 2 of the New Zealand Superannuation Act and continue to oppose it. We believe that there is a better way to future-proof our economy and to give the stable future that all New Zealanders deserve in their retirement.