Dyson Ruth: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dyson Ruth: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 26 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3362. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
: 
 I want to join my colleagues who have spoken in this debate by congratulating the Retirement Commissioner on consistently raising the issue of New Zealand superannuation into the future. The question that I was hoping the Minister in the chair the Minister of Internal Affairs might answer was this: how can we look New Zealanders in the eye and say that when they reach the age of retirement they will have a secure income that gives them the opportunity to live in dignity in our community? How can we say that they will not have to downsize they will not have to live in a poor state of health they will not have to live with poor housing conditions and they will be able to live with security and dignity? The way to do that is to ensure now that we have a fair and sustainable New Zealand superannuation scheme. 
That is the big challenge for New Zealand. That is the challenge the Retirement Commissioner has consistently put on the table for this Parliament to address and what the National Government has done—and John Key in particular—is bury its head in the sand and say: “This is too hard. It might not be popular. We’re going to hope the issue just goes away.” In fact John Key went so far as to say that he would resign rather than face up to the issue. Like my colleague David Shearer said I think it is a jolly good suggestion. 
We want to ensure not just for our generation but for our children’s and grandchildren’s generations and their children and grandchildren that they have security and dignity in their retirement years. We know already that a lot of young New Zealanders just do not believe that there will be a superannuation scheme for them in the future. That is really unacceptable. Our young people particularly those who are on low incomes who are putting away their bit of money into KiwiSaver hoping to be able to buy their first house but who do not have a lot of discretionary spend—the people on lower incomes who work as hard as they possibly can and contribute so well to our society to their families and to our communities—deserve the dignity of a secure retirement income as well. It is not good enough in the civilised society that we espouse to have in New Zealand that only the rich people in our society only people who are on very high incomes will have security and dignity in retirement. 
The reason this issue is so important is that like every other country we will have a higher percentage of people who are drawing on superannuation and a lower percentage of the population who are of working age and paying taxes to fund that superannuation. So that is the issue that we need to address. We know from OECD reports that we are an outlier on this issue: 28 of 34 OECD countries are planning to increase the age of entitlement for superannuation. New Zealand is out on its own in not facing up to this being one of the options that we need to address. The IMF says that our superannuation spending will increase in net present terms by 66 percent of GDP. That is a huge increase. Where does the money come from to fund future superannuation needs? Mercer says that if we increase the age of eligibility for superannuation by 2 years that would make a difference of $100 billion over a 30-year period. That is a massive amount of money and if you do it— 
Report noted.