Donald Rod: General Debates 
Donald Rod: General Debates 
[Volume:606;Page:3795] 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 Yesterday I asked Dr Cullen a serious question: “Should New Zealanders be furiously saving for their own retirement given that he wants the New Zealand Superannuation Fund to adopt the same investment strategy that caused the Government Superannuation Fund to lose $380 million in the last 14 months?” Dr Cullen gave a typically evasive and facetious answer. He had his usual swipe at the Green Futures Superannuation Fund which I put down to jealousy and he dismissed the losses as on par with other countries which I guess is his way of getting over embarrassment. He will be even more embarrassed by today’s Tremain cartoon which makes the obvious reference about Dr Cullen and Gamblers Anonymous.  
What he said yesterday was not good enough. There is no excuse for the Government Superannuation Fund Authority to lose 22.5 percent of its international investments in 14 months. Why did the authority take over $3.5 billion of funds in October 2001 when it did not have a single cent on the sharemarket and throw $1.6 billion at the sharemarket? Despite the fragility and volatility of the global economy the authority started throwing money at the casino economy. Today the fund is worth less than $3.1 billion—$400 million less than when it was administered by a Government department. In the first half of this year the fund has made a loss of $126 million—a long way from the profit projection of $272 million for the full year.  
The Government Superannuation Fund’s performance is nothing short of disastrous but it pales into insignificance when compared with its soon-to-be big brother—the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. This is Dr Cullen’s “think big” scheme with a projected value of $58 billion at its peak. But I predict it will never get there because if the New Zealand Superannuation Fund had invested the same proportion as the Government Superannuation Fund on the sharemarket it would have lost not $63 million not $630 million but $6.3 billion in the last year. That is why New Zealanders should be saving furiously for their own retirement.  
But at least we know the extent of the Government Superannuation Fund losses because in answers to written questions in the last week the Minister has come clean which is more than I can say for the guardians of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. They were extraordinarily evasive at the Finance and Expenditure Committee meeting this morning. The guardians are sitting on $2 billion and they do not have a clue what their asset allocation will be what their forecast return on investment will be or even whether they will make more than the cost of Government borrowing.  
They have about as much clue as Broadcasting Minister Steve Maharey has about the impact of the current General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) round on his portfolio. Dr Cullen’s written answers were appalling because of their content; Mr Maharey’s answers on the GATS have been appalling because of their lack of content. Given his answers to oral questions today the Minister’s lack of concern about the impact of GATS on audio-visual services is extraordinary. He confirmed that in the 1994 GATS round the then National Government traded away New Zealand’s ability to legislate a local content quota and that that would now be illegal under GATS. Incidentally that makes a nonsense of Labour’s 1999 election promise to do just that.  
Mr Maharey then admitted that he did not know what was on the block this time. Let me tell him. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade website is blunt: at least one country wants New Zealand to remove national treatment limitations for broadcasting services. If the Government agrees to that we can kiss goodbye to funding for Maori broadcasting and Government assistance to the New Zealand film industry through the Film Production Fund. Wake up Mr Maharey! Wake up Maori television and radio broadcasters! Wake up film makers! Wake up New Zealand! This Labour Government is negotiating GATS in secret. It has to be stopped. The process has to be dragged into the public arena and I do not just mean via a Canadian website. There needs to be an open transparent and democratic process that involves binding future Governments to rules set today. If Labour does not like what National did with broadcasting then it should not do it to the rest of us.  
I invite this Government to come clean on GATS. We should not have to rely on the European Commission’s demands being posted on the Polaris website—the same site that blew open the whole iniquitous Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). GATS is the MAI of this century. GATS needs to be exposed. Labour members on the other side and particularly the Maori members of Labour need to look into the implications of this GATS round on services because countries like those of the EC are making extraordinary demands to expose our public services to transnational corporations.