Nash Stuart: New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 30 June 2015. Volume:707;Page:4916. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier):“Harry Hindsight” is always right. There is absolutely no doubt about that but even better than “Harry Hindsight” is people admitting when they have made mistakes. Not once has anyone on that side of the Chamber stood up and said: “Yes you’re right. We should have put money back into this because it has earned 18 percent.” Since the global financial crisis it has been one of the best performing funds in the world actually. The New Zealand Superannuation Fund does not have to consider whether it is going to sell or buy the Shanghai Stock Exchange and “Harry Hindsight” has nothing to do with reality.The reality of the situation is that this is—Alastair Scott: It absolutely does. It is absolutely invested in the Shanghai exchange.STUART NASH: Let me outline the situation we have got at the moment. First of all superannuation is going to become unaffordable. We all know this. The second point is that Michael Cullen set up a fund to mitigate the risk to the Government finances around an unaffordable superannuation burden. Thirdly it has billions of dollars in it at the moment. Fourthly this National Government—and Bill English admitted this—stopped contributions because he wanted to give tax cuts to the people of New Zealand because that is what he promised. He did not have the wherewithal to say: “I made a mistake. We need to plan for our future. We need to plan for the future.” The fifth thing is we are still in a really bad position in terms of an affordable superannuation fund. Alastair you must know this. You were a trader. You know how these markets work. You talk about leveraging. This is all about managing risk.If I ask the question: “If we look at the risk 10 12 15 years out of a massive unaffordable burden on the taxpayer or the risk of breaking an election promise and not giving money back where do you think the New Zealand public would have sat?”. I firmly believe that they would have said: “We want certainty in our future. We want certainty in the future.” The Prime Minister could have managed that risk but he did not. He chose not to take that risk at all and as a consequence of this short-term thinking we have a superannuation fund that could be worth maybe $15 billion or $20 billion more. The Kirk superannuation fund which I have heard members on this side of the Chamber talk about would be worth $240 billion now. That is just predicated on an average rate of return from an average year. It could well be worth a hell of a lot more. So this is the difference between that side of the Chamber and this side. We like to plan for the future because we know “Harry Hindsight” is always right but we do not want to second-guess “Harry Hindsight”. We want to ensure that in fact when we look back we can say that we did what was right and this is the right thing to do.I come to Part 2 of the bill which is the part we are talking about. It is quite technical. But what it does do is it amends sections of the Income Tax Act 2007 so that these investment vehicles or companies in which an interest is held by the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation will not be subject to exemption for public authorities. There are a number of clauses in Part 2 that are actually quite technical. We have been through them to a certain extent. If we were to get really technical I think it would send everyone to sleep not just my colleagues who were yawning but even those who are unfortunate enough to have to watch this on television. But it deals with things like activities relating to the Superannuation Fund itself. It deals with amendments to the Income Tax Act which cut to the very essence of the Superannuation Fund. It talks about when the sections apply and how it is going to deal with these. It talks about the activities of the Crown relating to the fund. We have done that to death when we have talked about the rights of the Ministers and the Crown to intervene—when they should and when they should not and why they would or would not etc. We have also talked about fund investment vehicles. This is about the consolidation rules continuity provisions and other rules relating to groups of companies that apply to the Crown as owner of the funds when an investment fund vehicle is referred to etc.You have heard members on this side of the Chamber say that this is actually an important piece of legislation. You have also heard them say that we actually supported Part 2 when it went through the select committee. You had no argument from us there. Where you do have an argument from us where you do have a massive bone of contention is how we manage the fund what we do with it how far we look out and the sort of expectation we create for New Zealanders who are now looking forward and asking “What does the future look like? Where am I going to be? Am I actually going to be entitled to superannuation?” which has been the fundamental right of Kiwis ever since it was introduced by the first Labour Government.