Clark David: New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClark David: New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 30 June 2015. Volume:707;Page:4914. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North):Thank you Mr Chair—oh what a relief! Well the future of work—I was wondering where that member Chris Bishop was going with that. The Future of Work Commission I am happy to inform the member is proving to be a great boon to our engagement with the public. It is very popular. Everybody has a view on the future of work. I suspect that member was about to expound some more had he had the time to do it because actually everyone has a view on where work is going. Work affects everybody and of course no matter where you come from politically it is something that people want to engage on. So I thank that member for raising that—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Come back.Dr DAVID CLARK: —but the Chair rightly draws me back to the bill at hand and I am only too happy to speak to Part 2 of the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill if I could only jolly find the thing because I am told it contains a number of amendments to the Income Tax Act. If somebody does have a copy of the bill I had a couple of things I wanted to say but I wanted to jog my mind just to see what they were. Thank you very much colleague. I was distracted by that member opposite—and laugh well he might—but I was distracted by his comments on the future of work which of course are entirely relevant although not to this debate.Amendments to the Income Tax Act—ah yes. The amendments that could have been in here but are not are the ones that I wanted to look at. We know that there are many things as I said in my earlier contribution on Part 1 that could have been done on retirement savings that this Government has not done and right here is a paucity of vision again in Part 2 because what we have here are the minutiae of how this bill affects the Income Tax Act. There are sensible things in here—do not get me wrong. There are sensible things in here that we should be doing which we on this side agreed to. Of course we agreed to all of it in select committee as did the members opposite who are now backtracking on one or two matters. But in here we do not see for example provisions relating to the Income Tax Act in respect of resuming contributions to the fund because the Government has not done it. It has not done it. It has forgone $10 billion in revenue—$10 billion it would have got had it resumed those payments—but here we do not see any kinds of amendments in that respect. We do not see any amendments that plan for a future where we have secure retirement savings because it is not the Government’s priority and this is what we are faced with over and over again in this House.We do see the fund investment vehicles affecting the Income Tax Act and that is recorded here in subsection (3) of section HR 4B in clause 13 of Part 2—the various changes that are being made there—and they are sensible changes. Of course—Andrew Bayly: What changes are those?Dr DAVID CLARK: The member opposite asks what those changes are and I invite him to read the bill right here. They are right here in black and white. It is a very short bill and I invite the member to read it. He is welcome to make a speech if he feels passionately about these technical amendments but the broader point must be made that we are not arguing about the resumption of those payments to the Superannuation Fund which would have seen New Zealand so much better off.It would see us in so much better a position had Government members not been so short-sightedly focusing on borrowing instead for tax cuts—borrowing and borrowing. It is a Government that has borrowed more money than Muldoon opposite there. I see those members hanging their heads. They have gone quiet and well they might. They have failed to resume these payments which would have increased the savings available to future generations and that is because they are failing to have a plan for the future. On that side of the Chamber they are failing to plan for the future. We on this side would have liked to see some more dramatic changes in this part of the bill that reflected the resumption of savings to contribute to the most successful scheme in the world—we are told one of the best schemes in the world if not the best scheme in the world. The Cullen fund the one that Bill English called a dog that has been hailed from Antarctica to Zimbabwe is a superb fund and something that does the job that we would hope it to do if they would only let it.Here in this bill—as I said in my previous contribution we do support the overall intention but we note again that it lacks the broad vision. The Government members lack the plan they are not making the big steps that they ought to be making and that is why we see in this part of the bill no big changes in respect of resumption of those payments or any tax implications that might be coming from that. Thank you.