Williams Andrew: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Andrew: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 01 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19051. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First):That is right. I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on the Appropriation (2014/15 Estimates) Bill in regard to the finance debate. It is most disappointing as a New Zealander to have to look at the figures that this Government puts up because much of it is a litany of lies. The reason I say that is that New Zealanders have been robbed for the last 5 years of Government contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. This National Government has not contributed 1 cent to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund for the last 5 years and this Budget and the estimates going forward also do not provide for any contributions for the next 5 years. For a whole decade under this Government New Zealanders are being robbed of their future retirement fund.That retirement fund to the year ended 31 May 2014 is currently worth $26.14 billion. The average return of the fund since its inception under Dr Cullen when he was Minister of Finance has average 9.74 percent. The last 12 months the fund has returned a 17.2 percent return to the fund after costs. And in the last 5 years the New Zealand Superannuation Fund has returned a 16.8 percent average over those 5 years. These are incredible figures. In the 1 month alone of May 2014 when the finance Minister was issuing his Budget the fund made 2.57 percent return—for that 1 month. Yet the Minister of Finance tells us that it is poor fiscal management to borrow any money to put into the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. When the Government can borrow funds in the order of 3 or 4 percent per annum and when a fund is returning 17.2 percent in the last year basically this Government is robbing the people of New Zealand in order to falsify the books and make sure that the Budget looks OK.At the same time during that same period when the Government sold the State-owned assets it promised the people of New Zealand that it would get between $5 billion and $7 billion for those assets. That is what it sold the promise on. It ended up with a miserable $4.5 billion from the sales—some $2 billion to $2.5 billion less than what it promised the people of New Zealand. It said originally that it would use the funds to pay down debt but what did it do? In the meantime the debt carried on mounting. It took on a debt 5 or 6 years ago of about $6 billion when it left the Opposition benches and became Government. That has now gone up tenfold to $60 billion under this National Government. At the same time it said that it would put that $4.5 billion into new projects such as 21st century schools. It said it would put it into 21st century schools. But what is it actually doing? It is putting the money into fixing leaky schools—hundreds and hundreds of leaky school buildings. There are over 300 leaky school buildings around New Zealand. That is where the money is going—again to make up for an error of the National Government from the 1990s when it allowed the leaky building programme to get under way.At the same time where has the rest of the $4.5 billion gone? Well $120 million went to the sharebrokers who sold the shares in the first place. So this whole Budget and estimates have come out showing that the Government has a $372 million surplus and showing how wonderfully it is doing as managers of the economy but $120 million - odd in the last year has just gone to the sharebrokers—the friends of Mr Key and Mr English—just to sell the shares. At the same time another $40 million went to pay for free bonus shares for those who bought into State assets. Is that not incredible? The Government gave away another $40 million to the 2.5 percent of New Zealanders who bought into the shares. Previously the shares were 100 percent owned by you me everybody else in this room and everybody else around this country and now 2.5 percent of New Zealanders own those shares and $40 million was given to the asset buyers to help pay for free bonus shares in the coming year.At the same time another $100 million went into shoring up stricken Solid Energy another State-owned enterprise—another $100 million. Most of these figures are just absolute nonsense. This is an absolute smoke and mirrors Budget. The estimates going forward are absolute hogwash. This Government makes out that it is running a surplus but in actual fact if the media was to jolly well do some proper research—some proper investigative research—and show how the Government is not putting any money into the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and how most of the money—