Ardern Jacinda: KiwiSaver Budget Measures Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: KiwiSaver Budget Measures Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3822. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour):This is our opportunity in this part of the debate on the KiwiSaver Budget Measures Bill to talk about what we believe this bill should be called. The most obvious thing from my perspective is that if this bill were really speaking the truth it would be called the “Widening Intergenerational Inequality Bill”. It feels like Groundhog Day for me to be in this Chamber yet again debating another measure to cut the savings base for New Zealanders in this country.Chris Bishop: It feels like that for you? Goodness me.JACINDA ARDERN: I still remember Chris Bishop my very first Budget in this House when that National Government made substantive changes to KiwiSaver. I remember vividly walking outside to the Noes lobby and seeing Michael Cullen sitting on the couch there with this absolutely devastated look on his face. All of the work that the Labour Government had done to build up savings in this country to make sure that New Zealanders had a nest egg that meant that they would not just scrape by on a pension but have quality of life in their old age—in one fell Budget that Government gutted it. I remember that Budget to this day. National has done it eight times since—and that is just during my time in this House. That is not to mention what National did under Muldoon to devastate the potential that we had in New Zealand to have a massive savings base.We talk about the gap between New Zealand and Australia—that is when that gap started. The Australians made the sensible decision to have a decent superannuation scheme across the entire population and we had that opportunity under Kirk. But once again National demonstrated its short-sighted approach when it comes to savings and it gutted them. They absolutely gutted them. Everything that we have been doing since then has been to try to regain that ground. And again here we are with another demonstration of the fact that that Government is absolutely disinterested in what it is doing for future generations. It is not just savings. It is housing where we have a generation of renters. It is education where student loans are mounting for the next generation. And it is even things like climate change.If that Government wants to prove that this bill is not about intergenerational inequality that it is not about their having more than what the next lot will get I challenge just one of them to stand up and say that they did not take the $1000 KiwiSaver kick-start themselves. Because that is what we are cutting today. We are cutting something that I would almost guarantee every single one of the MPs on that side of the Chamber took up. We did—we did. We put it out there and said that it was for everyone who joins. Did that side of the Committee do the same? I challenge just one of them to say that they did not because if all of them did then they are absolutely depriving everyone else of something that they benefited from. I also challenge members on that side of the Committee to stand up and tell us—give us a guarantee—that they did not tell their kids to sign up before they took it away as well because that is what we are debating today. This bill will stop anyone else from getting that $1000 kick-start contribution which we know so many would have taken.In my short time available I also want to point out that this bill starts from the time that the Budget was passed and yet how long are we waiting for $25 a week to go to beneficiaries? It is not happening until next year. So we take immediately and we leave everyone else to wait until they can gain that kind of small amount of money.This is a bill that should be renamed the “We Choose Sticks Instead of Incentives Bill because this bill was always about incentivising people to join KiwiSaver. But we know that that side of the Committee never wanted people to join. And where is the evidence of that? Well I have got a little article here from the New Zealand Herald dated 1 March 2006. When Michael Cullen introduced the idea of KiwiSaver he said that it was his aspiration that 25 percent of workers join it and things like the kick-start contribution were there to motivate people to do that. What was the National Party’s response to that? The National Party members’ response to that was to say that they thought he was dreaming. They said in 2006 that Michael Cullen was dreaming that people would join up at a rate of 25 percent. Well how many do we have now? We have 2.5 million people in this scheme. That Government never wanted Kiwis to have KiwiSaver.