Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's my pleasure to speak on the behalf of—or open up the batting as it were for the National Party on the Employment Relations (Protection for Kiwisaver Members) Amendment Bill. I'm sure there'll be a lot of keen anticipation as to whether we will be supporting this bill in the first reading and I can inform the House that we will support it at first reading to be considered by the Finance and Expenditure Committee.Look I think you know Michael Cullen was an interesting finance Minister. He was—up until Grant Robertson I suppose probably knocked him off the perch—I think one of the most rapacious Labour Party finance Ministers; a great tax collector. He kept on collecting taxes and never ever yielded any kind of tax relief. But when it came to the introduction of KiwiSaver as an institution in this country I think he is one of the relatively few members of Parliament who can point to a significant contribution because there's no question that many New Zealanders have been able to and encouraged to save more for their retirement because of this scheme. In a perfect world people should have every ability to choose how they want to save—whether they want to pay off their mortgage more or spend their money at particular times of their life—and so we were always a little hesitant around such a scheme. But I think time has indicated that it has worked well and so that is why we have continued to—or we did under the John Key Government and we continue now to support the scheme.It's quite different to Australia. A lot of people will say the New Zealand sort of contributions—near 3 percent or 4 percent in many instances—are well short of the scale of the contributions in Australia for example which are much larger. The only point I'd make there is that they have ultimately a very different approach to superannuation in Australia. In New Zealand we have universal superannuation. Everybody over the age of 65 has access to it—it's not means-tested. We went through a period of our history where we experimented with that and it wasn't well received so we have a universal superannuation. So the purpose of the saving through KiwiSaver is not to kind of replace that pension but to augment it to give people that little bit extra so that they can have a more comfortable retirement while also being able to rely on their universal superannuation. The Australian system is different really. Ultimately they have a meanstested system and it is in effect a replacement for Government-funded superannuation for those who have the ability to save a lot over their course of their working environment.So I think we need to be careful about just following the Australian pattern because it leads to a very different outcome which I don't think is necessarily better. I think our approach—universal superannuation with every encouragement for people to add to that through KiwiSaver—is a good approach.Now this bill—what does it do? Well it has identified a potential problem which has been identified by the introducer of this bill Tracey McLellan whereby it is possible for employers to fiddle around with the arrangements between workers who take up KiwiSaver and those workers who don't. As everybody knows it's not compulsory in New Zealand currently to have KiwiSaver and some people don't for a whole variety of reasons. So it is possible in theory that an employer might offer particular encouragement or different benefits to employees that don't take up KiwiSaver and therefore don't require them to put in the 3 percent or 4 percent that they're putting in. This legislation deals with this and in essence forces employers to treat them all the same. Then any KiwiSaver contribution is on top of that. Then it gives the ability for a personal grievance to enforce that.Now it's often the case in these circumstances when it comes to tinkering with the regime that that KiwiSaver operates in that there can be unintended consequences and you could end up with actually outcomes that aren't anticipated. That's why yeah we are happy to support this to go to select committee and if it is the will of the next Government that we continue with this member's bill if a member can be found—if Dr McLellan survives the election or one of her colleagues wants to pick up the bill then we'll consider that through the select committee process—Arena Williams: She's a survivor.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: —which is a robust process—Arena Williams: He thinks she's getting a promotion.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: —and we'll have the opportunity to do that. Now—Camilla Belich: She might be a Minister.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Thank you very much for those comments. So here we are. Of course the most important thing when it comes to KiwiSaver contributions is of course the more people earn the higher their incomes the higher the KiwiSaver contributions can be. So fundamentally we're a Government—well we're a party and hoping to be a Government that will focus on growing those New Zealand incomes so that we can not only enjoy a higher standard of living today but can also salt away some savings for later so that we can have a more comfortable retirement. That ultimately rests on an effective growth plan.We haven't heard too much about an economic growth plan from Mr Robertson and from members opposite but the foundations of that haven't really changed. It's about having an environment that is encouraging of investment because ultimately how do you grow the economy—how do you grow the economy? You have to find some people who are prepared to invest their money to start a new business to grow a business to take on the world to start exporting—all those things rely on investment. So you need a climate that's encouraging of investment. You need good quality infrastructure. You need decent skills that people can draw on. You also need to keep taxes low—and we've heard a lot about taxes today. We're a country that wants to keep those taxes as low as possible.But perhaps I might be trespassing on the good will of the Speaker by going too far away from this particular bill—other than to say that we thank the member Dr McLellan for bringing this bill before us. We're happy to take it to select committee and have a look and we'll see how it progresses in the next Government.This will be the final members' day for the year and it is worth taking a moment to reflect on the many contributions of members. I've been a member of Parliament for 12 years. I've had a bill in every ballot and I've only had one drawn. I'd just like to state on the record that there's something wrong with that ballot system. I want to see the odds—I want to see the odds—because it doesn't seem right to me that there are some members that get a whole heap. And I'm thinking of—well I won't name names but there's some members that have been a lot luckier than me over the course of the 12 years and I just want to put that on the record. But I'll leave it at that.