Woolerton R Doug: KiwiSaver Bill — In Committee 
Woolerton R Doug: KiwiSaver Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:633;Page:4915] 
R DOUG WOOLERTON (NZ First) 
: 
 I will take up John Key’s challenge because as every financial adviser knows one can always put aside a dollar for savings. I am not talking about the financial advisers in the money markets that John Key deals with; I am talking about the budgeters the people who talk to other people about how to extend their dollars in order to make the home budget work as his mother did. His mother would have understood that just as my mother would have. It is a matter of making savings a priority and it is a matter of getting the habit of saving into one’s psyche. People know—and Mr Key knows this but he has forgotten it because it is a very long time ago for him—that the important thing is to make the effort to save and to make saving a habit. Anybody who does budgeting or who does household budgeting knows that. 
I suggest that in many many homes across the country when the man of the household is not doing as he should it is the mother the lady of the household who will quietly put aside a couple of bucks each week for what she knows will be a rainy day—or for the skates that the Minister in the chair Lianne Dalziel was talking about— 
John Key 
: Boots I think she was talking about. 
R DOUG WOOLERTON 
: The boots or the skates. That conjures up thoughts that actually put me off my speech so I will not go there. 
Chris Auchinvole 
: Have a visual! 
R DOUG WOOLERTON 
: No we will not go there. It is the mothers who understand these things. It is the mothers who will take money out of the household budget and put it aside for a rainy day. This Government because it has mothers within it understands that and that that is the answer. 
It is not a monetary answer. It is not an answer one will find in the money markets; nor is it one that people who deal in big amounts of money will understand. It is an answer that households across this country will understand because they are living with it each day. They will put the money they take from their household budgets into KiwiSaver. From time to time they may take a holiday from putting money into the scheme. They may actually have a diversion to the mortgage or for whatever else but slowly and surely over many many years—and hopefully over a generation or two if somebody does not come into power and wreck this scheme—we will build again a savings culture in this country. More than anything else that is what this scheme is about. 
Mr Key is an intelligent man—people tell me he is and he seems to be. He knows that this scheme is about building a savings culture. He knows it is to be intergenerational. He knows saving is made for the long term but he is required to speak against this bill. Mr Key favours it himself but because he is required to speak against it by other members of his caucus team he goes out and stonewalls on it. 
As the Minister was saying this is not an opt-in scheme; it is an opt-out scheme. So people who join the workforce or start a job have the option 2 weeks later of opting out. I think that is a good thing too because it is true that often we do not get around to these things. It is like putting the money in the cookie jar: we do not get around to it and largely it is the mothers who do so. I can just see mothers right across the country asking their children whether they have joined the KiwiSaver scheme yet. For years mothers have been asking their children whether they have joined a savings scheme and are putting a little aside and whether they have done something about superannuation. And the answer is no no no all over the place. The mothers I am speaking about will be happy to see this KiwiSaver scheme because they know they have a better chance of holding their children in the scheme than of getting them to join it.