Yule LawrenceLAWRENCE YULE (National—Tukituki): I rise to speak against this KiwiFund Bill. While I have a lot of respect for the honourable member Fletcher Tabuteau and the fact that he has got a member's bill into the House I'm actually left asking the question: what are we trying to fix here? If you actually look at our savings record—and Michael Wood commented on it—we now have 75 percent of people saving for their retirement. That has largely happened under a National Government. You might criticise how it happened but it's largely happened during that time. It hasn't happened yesterday; it's happened over the last nine years.Actually there is nothing to currently prevent anybody including the Rt Hon Winston Peters from setting up a superannuation fund himself with very low fees without a Government guarantee to actually support the people he's claiming he wants to support. There is actually nothing in law to prevent that from occurring.So what we've got in this bill is another working group. This is the 13th working group. It will have 12 months to review things and five members to look at a whole series of things that I actually think can be looked at in a very different way. So we've heard a lot of concern about fees. I get that. I understand that every person that makes an investment or is part of one of these schemes largely operates in a passive way. I understand that but they want to make sure that they're not being ripped off.Well actually there are fees published annually. You can find them out. There is a variety of fee structures operating in a market at the moment but actually if what we're trying to look at is fees why don't we do an inquiry into superannuation fees? I listened to Michael Wood who happens to be the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee. While it's not his committee actually if that's what is required we could easily through one of the select committees do an inquiry.But what we're going to do is not do that. We're going to bring in a piece of legislation and take it through a whole process after we've had a working group to see whether there's actually a problem. Actually we don't need any of this. We could simply have an inquiry. If the issue is about transparency the same thing could apply. If we're worried about how transparency is dealt with the same thing could apply. We could ask some people to look at it. If there's a big enough issue it could be dealt with.I also think that this Government is really mocking its own brand which is what KiwiSaver has done through Kiwibank—a Government-owned entity that is going really well. I also accept that if there was and there does require to be some level of investment in New Zealand from these fund managers that equally is not a bad laudable goal as long as everybody understands you might not get the top rate of return or the risk profile might be different.Currently there are nine default providers. There are heaps of small funds and actually there is no limitation to setting up your own fund. And for the life of me Mr Tabuteau I cannot understand why you are following down the Government guarantee path. Why would you want to expose the Government to actually managing people's funds in a different way than they are managed largely by the private sector or in KiwiBank's case by a Government-owned entity? What you end up with is if you have lower fees and you put constraints on things then actually people generally will get a lower rate of return—generally. Now there are lots of funds already available in the private sector that actually people can make those calls.Michael Wood: Or maybe the Australian banks could just make a little bit less profit. Has it ever occurred to the National Party?LAWRENCE YULE: Yes and people can make that call but they don't need a Government guarantee process to do that nor do we need another Government fund. At the moment we have gone from 16 percent—as Michael Wood said—of people making investments in long-term savings to 75 percent under the current model. If the only issue we're worried about is fees and transparency why doesn't that side of the House initiate an inquiry to look at it without taking the House's time going through a process that quite frankly is not required? Thank you.