Key John: KiwiSaver Bill — In Committee 
Key John: KiwiSaver Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:633;Page:4933] 
JOHN KEY (National—Helensville) 
: 
 I am pleased to engage in Part 4 of the KiwiSaver Bill. Before the dinner break there was a very interesting situation. My good friend from New Zealand First Doug Woolerton had made some interesting comments in the debate. He spoke about the desire to have KiwiSaver rolled out to lower-income New Zealanders which is something the National Party fully supports. Interestingly enough he made the point about how difficult it is for lower-income New Zealanders to have enough money—enough after-tax dollars—in their hands. He did not go so far as to mention that if Labour had not stolen $882000 to pay for its election campaign New Zealanders would all have a little more. But he had an opportunity when the rubber hit the road to vote to have a lower contribution for New Zealanders who earned a little less and could not afford initially to put their money in. 
I was shocked because the vote on that amendment was much closer than I thought it would be. Had ACT been in the Chamber the vote would have been 61-60—that is how close it was. When I went upstairs earlier Jeanette Fitzsimons was there. She said to me: “Mr Key I thought it would be Mr Woolerton who would have voted for that—caring for those lower-income New Zealanders.” I said: “Jeanette my apologies to you then on behalf of New Zealand First and Doug Woolerton. He talks tough when he is on his feet in the House but the truth is that he did not want to support lower-income New Zealanders to be able to afford to put 2 percent in.” It took the National Party to front up. 
That is why National will be on the Government benches in less than 2 years’ time. The people of New Zealand know a good thing when they see it. One thing that they know is not a good thing is the KiwiSaver Bill and they know this for a number of reasons. Within the bill there are a number of substantial issues. Those issues are partly around the bill’s complexity. One of the things Part 4 does is provide for a default provider. The way a default provider works is that if a person goes to his or her employer and does not specify whom he or she want the funds to be managed by then that person is allocated on a rotation basis of the default provider. At this stage we do not know who the default providers are. 
It was a very interesting exercise on the Finance and Expenditure Committee. Some of my fellow members on that committee including Mr Foss and Mr Tremain who are very hard-working members and Dr Smith who is an incredibly hard-working member had some really interesting questions to ask about default providers. They failed to get the sorts of answers we would have liked. Many of those default providers went to quite considerable expense including one of them who told me that the time scale for the application—the request for proposal—to be a default provider was so tight that the default providers could not courier the documents down and be sure they would get there. They flew a person from Auckland with the documents. They then put that person in a taxi at Wellington Airport—this is an absolutely true story. It turned out that the roads were so badly maintained under a Labour Government—those taxpayer dollars were being used to prop up its re-election campaign as opposed to fixing the roads of Wellington—that the taxi could not go the normal way and the person ended up paying $228 for a taxi ride to get the document out to Lower Hutt where it was delivered. That is what the default providers went through and they know that it was not worth putting the time and effort into that expense unless the bill was changed. 
We know from Michael Cullen that the first round of changes came when his back was to the wall last week. My prediction is that before the next general election substantial changes will be made to KiwiSaver because the Government knows that it will not work in its current form; it knows that the private sector and the default providers that are covered under Part 4 of the KiwiSaver Bill have gone to tremendous expense to try to become a default provider. Those default providers know that that is a waste of time a waste of money and a wasted exercise unless some changes are made. 
In fact tonight during the early part of the dinner break I wandered over to the new Treasury building—another mausoleum being built by a Labour Government that houses one or two bureaucrats in every second building in Wellington. There was a huge celebration when the Prime Minister was there to launch yet another building. There I ran into one of New Zealand’s most pre-eminent fund managers—someone who is definitely involved in KiwiSaver. When I spoke to that person—whom I will not identify for good reason—that person said to me: “It’s a disaster we can’t understand it and it’s only worse if you look at overseas tax bills.”