Copeland Gordon: Public Finance (State Sector Management) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Copeland Gordon: Public Finance (State Sector Management) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Sitting date: 14 December 2004. Volume:622;Page:17863. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 I will take a brief call on section 26N “Statement on long-term fiscal position” inserted by clause 8. This clause obliges Treasury no later than the second financial year after the Act comes into force—and by my reckoning that will be before 30 June 2006—to present to Parliament a statement relating to a period of at least 40 consecutive financial years. That would be if you like a long-term forecast of New Zealand’s financial position—or more correctly the financial position of the Government or the Crown—for the next 40 years. That will be a very welcome development because one of the things that has bedevilled New Zealand in the last 30 years or so has been the concentration of successive Governments on short-term goals—something that is understandable in a highly-politicised environment—often to the exclusion of longer-term strategic thinking about the direction of the country. 
Yet that longer-term thinking if we think about it is vitally important in a number of areas. I will mention just a few of them. The first one is superannuation. We actually need to know here and now what the liability of the Crown for superannuation is going out 40 years. We would be well served if we had a well-researched actuarial assessment of what superannuation will cost the country over the next 40 years. I know that some work has already been done on that and I have seen some of the projections which of course bring into account the demographics over that period of time and other assumptions. Such an assessment would make the situation very very clear for those people who still have doubts for example about the worth of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund commonly known as the “Cullen fund” and it would hold those parties to account in terms of throwaway lines about how we should just wrap the whole thing up and pay off some debt or whatever. It is not so simple and a 40-year projection would illustrate that for all concerned. 
There are other things. Roading for example lasts for at least 40 years if not longer. In fact it is a bit like the carpenter’s hammer—as long as one keeps it maintained and upgraded from time to time it will last forever. Transmission for the national electricity grid is a similar thing. Most of the transmission grid we have now has been in existence for 40 years. Hospitals are another case in point. Most of our hospitals have a very very long life and recently we have been going through a period of replacing many of them. Then we look at things that will be introduced in the future I hope like public-private partnerships. Certainly if United Future has a bigger say in the next Government that will be something we will be looking at much more seriously. 
 Interruption 
] I would have thought the National Party might actually be in agreement with some of these policies but maybe those comments just illustrate the point I am making about concentrating on short-term political expediency to the exclusion of longer-term considerations. 
Public-private partnerships could be used for prisons roading—as we already have in our legislation—hospitals and so on and could enable the infrastructure development in New Zealand to proceed much more quickly. I am a bit concerned at times that we seem to be focused on funding all those capital costs out of current revenues when we could take a longer-term view smooth it intergenerationally and end up with better outcomes for our nation. So I think the new provisions in the bill will be positive for the country. They are a very good inclusion and I will look forward to seeing before June 2006 the first 40-year projection prepared by Treasury.