Wong Pansy: KiwiSaver Bill — In Committee 
Wong Pansy: KiwiSaver Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:633;Page:4956] 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 That was a fine contribution from the new leader of the “Dynamic Party” Doug Woolerton. He looked calm but he was quite upset that United Future seemed to want to take the credit for the mortgage diversion scheme. I am afraid that he was a bit too late. 
The chairman of the Finance and Expenditure Committee Mr Shane Jones took a call earlier. But I am very concerned about the fact that he has already shown no confidence in this bill. In fact he has already told the Committee that just as the sun rises in the east so was the bill definitely to change as it went forward. He talked about a lot of fine-tuning. Well let us talk about fine-tuning. We are quite wary of Labour’s fine-tuning. Six weeks ago after Dr Ingram’s inquiry the Prime Minister the Rt Hon Helen Clark announced that the honourable Taito Phillip Field had been cleared of a conflict of interest. Six weeks later the fine-tuning from the Prime Minister is that the member should consider his future. The same fine-tuning applies to this Prime Minister the Rt Hon Helen Clark who said the Auditor-General and the Solicitor-General were wrong. The Labour Party stole the election by spending over $800000 of taxpayers’ money so why should the New Zealand public be convinced that they will gain under the KiwiSaver scheme? 
We know the KiwiSaver scheme will not work because of some interesting things said by Lianne Dalziel the only Minister who has taken a call—actually the Hon Michael Cullen has also taken a call now—on the bill. In her contribution earlier she said the KiwiSaver Bill is not for those people who cannot afford to save. In fact an amendment from the Green Party might have actually helped those people who cannot afford to save by making the contribution a smaller amount—say 2 percent. The Hon Dr Michael Cullen shakes his head. I would like the Minister of Finance to stand up and say how the Government can assist those people who cannot afford to save. The purpose of this bill is to encourage individual New Zealanders to save so that they can enjoy standards of living after retirement similar to those pre-retirement which is quite a tall order. If a large number of New Zealanders are not able to save or cannot afford to save then surely the purpose of this bill cannot be fulfilled. 
We have looked at some research from overseas and found that in Ireland which has a scheme similar to this one 92 percent of the accounts are dormant—that is people are taking a long holiday a long break from contributing to the scheme. So I do not know why the Minister thinks that this scheme is the best thing under the sun. The first priority for New Zealanders who cannot afford to save is to increase their income. One of the ways to do that is to reduce the amount of tax they have to pay. 
For the people in the group that can afford to save would they be incentivised to save under this account? My good colleagues including Katherine Rich have repeatedly said that some people would save just the amount they can withdraw then withdraw it to pay off their mortgage. That would not be I think the main objective of this bill which is to encourage them to look beyond property investment. We all know that right now the Governor of the Reserve Bank is always warning people about the overheated property market and saying that New Zealanders should look at other types of savings. But when New Zealanders start to look at other types of savings such as shares they see what the Labour Government did to destroy their worth in Telecom.