Mitchell Clayton: New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMitchell Clayton: New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 30 June 2015. Volume:707;Page:4907. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First):I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a short call in support of this New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill. To be fair it is not something that I was part of in the select committee but it has taken only 5 minutes for me to pick up on the fact that this makes common sense.David Bennett: Sit down Clayton.CLAYTON MITCHELL: To be honest Mr Bennett you remind me of the theme song from Team America: World Police—“I am so lonely!”—sitting over there so far away from all of your team mates. You are not making a lot of sense and like Alistair Scott and Mr Bayly you do not make a lot of sense either. In actual fact I am supporting your bill so what are you yelling at me for anyway? You are a very lonely and confused man I have to say.To be fair there is a serious need and some investment required to get the right people looking after the hard-earned money that we are investing for our future. Many of us put aside 4 percent to 8 percent of our money—sometimes more than that—to go into the Cullen fund which was created by Dr Michael Cullen to look after the future of New Zealanders. I have to say that this bill uses a language that in my opinion is very easy to grasp although there is an ambiguous term in clause 4—amending section 38—which says the explicit purpose is that “(2) The fund is not an entity separate from the Crown.” You have to say that over in your head a couple of times. That has to be probably the most ambiguous part of the whole bill. What it is actually trying to say is that that fund is very much part of the Crown and a very very important part of the future of New Zealand. So we support that as well.The bill talks about FIVs and other acronyms that we all love and hate back home. If anybody is watching and I am sure that many of you are an FIV is a fund investment vehicle. That is just a pretty way of looking at the way the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation the people looking after those funds can get better returns for those hard-earned Kiwi dollars going into investments. When we heard Russel Norman speak about this initially when it was first discussed at the first reading he talked about his concerns about the Government’s interference in where those investments were going to go. To be honest the reality is that he does not want it to go into exploration or gas or mining but the reality is that we should be looking seriously at putting it where we can get the best investments for the future of New Zealanders. We are getting some fantastic returns on investment—around the 19 percent mark. That is absolutely fantastic and we hope that continues. Obviously with the Greece debacle at the moment interest rates and share prices have dropped along with our Kiwi dollar and I hope that the Kiwi dollar can come down some more yet.The purpose of the fund is a fund protection and to return as much as we can to those superannuitants. One of the things in this bill that I commend the most is the Supplementary Order Paper that takes away the Minister’s ability to interfere with that fund and to decide when or whether it is a good investment or not. In reality you need to put a firewall up to create some separation from those Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation—those investors; the people who are looking after New Zealanders’ hard-earned money and are putting it in the right location. So I commend the Minister for putting forward Supplementary Order Paper 89 deleting that subsection completely. This is a bill that we would like to see progress. We think that it sits well for the best part of all New Zealanders despite the confusing remarks we have had from over on the other side of the Chamber.Ron Mark: They don’t understand their own bill.CLAYTON MITCHELL: They do not understand their own bill and clearly they have not read it. To be fair it does make sense and those people sitting at home can rest assured that their investments are being looked after and are getting very good returns. As Porky Pig famously said one day: “That’s all folks.”