Nash Stuart: New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 07 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3337. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier):Yes I am standing up to support the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill. But the last member who spoke was a little disingenuous I think in the way that he represented the Labour Party. No we understand that the State does not manage this fund. What we do understand is that the State set this fund up and there is a fundamental difference there. In terms of Labour not being in favour of foreign investment Labour absolutely welcomes foreign investment. However what we do say about foreign investment is that it has to add value over and above that which can be added by New Zealanders.Grant Robertson: Productive not speculative.STUART NASH: Absolutely. In the last 3 years there has not been one—not been one—application to the Overseas Investment Office under the Overseas Investment Act that has been turned down. We would put stricter controls on this because we believe that if foreigners are going to come into our country and buy our land buy our strategic assets and buy our fishing quota which they are able to do they must prove by law that they are adding value. The interesting thing is that one of the major conditions around overseas investors buying our land is that they create jobs. However the Overseas Investment Office has absolutely no idea how many jobs foreign investment has created in this country. That is one of the reasons why we need to better control who is investing in our country—where what how and why.What Labour would look to do I believe is just sort of put a little bit more structure around foreign investment in this country which we absolutely need. The last speaker Alastair Scott talked about investing in forestry. Bring it on. Forestry is one of the lifebloods of our regions. It has the potential to create so many jobs. Unfortunately under this Government over 60 percent of all logs harvested in this country head offshore without a cent of value being added.Let me give you an example of a fantastic Minister for Economic Development and what he did as a spokesperson. When Jim Anderton was Minister for Economic Development he paved the way for Juken Nissho to set up a mill in Gisborne that employs 400 people. That was because of Jim Anderton’s intervention. This Government believes that you take a hands-off approach. That is the difference between Labour and National. This Government believes that if you leave it to the market the market has all the solutions; whereas Labour believes that the Government has a very important role to play in driving economic growth. Nothing epitomises this more than the work that Jim Anderton did. In fact the interesting thing is that Jim Anderton is one of only two people who have been given the keys to the region of Northland. The other one was Sid Going. He was an All Black in the day.Grant Robertson: Oh is that right?STUART NASH: Absolutely—absolutely. There is an interesting fact. Sorry; he was created an honorary citizen because of the work he did in that region—an honorary citizen. That is what a good proactive Minister for Economic Development does under a Government that believes in the regions.Let me quote to you if I may from the Minister of Finance in his first reading speech on this bill. He said that the bill “was set up under the previous Government by Dr Michael Cullen with an elegant legislative scheme and funding formula designed to allow New Zealand to pre-fund some of the costs of national superannuation—in fact pre-funded to the extent that tax rates would hold steady while the population aged. In that sense it is a form of savings for today’s taxpayers where they will avoid tax increases in the future.” That pretty much epitomises the difference between Labour and National. What Dr Cullen said was: “I have a vision for the future. What I want to be able to do is to make sure that New Zealanders as they age are going to be looked after in their retirement.” What he said was: “I’m going to put this money aside and I’m going to grow this fund.” This was a vision whereas what National came in and said was: “No. No money for the super fund. We’re going to cut taxes.” It was a very short-term really opportunistic policy and it blew the long-term policy out of the water.In fact if we look at the Superannuation Fund’s past history National has a way of sort of scuttling these things. In fact I was talking to Emeritus Professor WE Wilson—you may know WE Wilson actually. I was talking to him about the Kirk superannuation fund. It is estimated that if the Kirk superannuation fund was still around today it would be worth about $240 billion. It would be an absolute game-changer. In fact there would be no debates about the sale of State assets. There would be no debates about how we are going to raise money for this or that form of infrastructure because we would own them. We would absolutely own these assets. We would have a superannuation fund worth $249 billion. Just imagine that. I suppose that the approach to superannuation epitomises as mentioned the difference between our two parties: visionary in the sense of Dr Cullen visionary in the sense of Norman Kirk; short-term and opportunistic in terms of Robert Muldoon and short-term and opportunistic in terms of John Key and Bill English.You can hypothesise about this but it is believed that the amount of money that has been forgone because Mr English cut contributions to the Superannuation Fund is around $10 billion. The Superannuation Fund has made on average about 10.3 percent over its whole life. That includes during the global financial crisis. In fact last year it made 14 percent on its investments.Again when I talk about the difference between National and Labour National believes that you give the money back to the people and they know what to do with it. Well we do not believe in high tax rates. Of course we do not. In fact we would love to run a Government where we gave tax cuts to all. In fact if I look at the last Government that gave massive tax cuts it was a Labour Government that cut tax rates from 66 percent to 33 percent. A Labour Government was responsible for the last major overhaul of the tax system whereas National has always tinkered. In fact it is quite interesting when you look over the history of Governments Labour Governments have always been ones of social evolution whereas National Governments have been ones of tinkering. It is actually quite interesting.But anyway what I would like to say is that we support this bill because we understand that in fact you need a diversified portfolio. That is vital. We know that if you invest too much money in the New Zealand Exchange and capital markets it will create distortions that are just you know not right for the market. So we have to invest overseas. We understand that and it is why we support this bill.However what we also support is ethical investment. This is where the Greens—Russel Norman and James Shaw—and the Labour Party agree. We cannot just be going out investing in absolutely anything. It plays into our brand. You know we have a global brand that is around clean green and 100 percent pure. It does not relate just to our environment; it relates to how people perceive our country. We must work incredibly hard to protect this brand. I truly believe that one of the really damaging things this Government has done is to devalue our brand to such an extent that the leverage that a lot of our companies that go offshore get from our brand is diminishing. I reckon that we have about 3 to 5 years to sort this out. If we do not then we are in real trouble. We are going to go to Paris and for me I think we are going to get absolutely caned. We used to be leaders in this and because we were leaders we sort of held the global moral imperative. Now we do not. This started with David Lange and his denying nuclear ships entry into our harbours. The unintended consequence was that people saw a little country that stood up for its principles but under this Government we have slipped. We really have and it is an absolute shame.That is why our sovereign New Zealand Superannuation Fund must be seen to invest in an ethical way. It plays into who we are as a country and how people perceive New Zealanders as business people and as a country. One thing I would urge this Government to do is to make sure that it protects our brand over absolutely anything because they reckon that in about 2005 it was worth $20 billion per year. Devalue that and we become just another small economy selling commodities into an ever-shrinking global market place. We support this bill we understand that the New Zealand Superannuation Fund must practise a balanced and diverse portfolio but we also believe that it must invest in an ethical manner. Thank you very much.