Cosgrove Clayton: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Cosgrove Clayton: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:617;Page:13238] 
CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 I want to follow on from where Dr Cullen left off. Is it not ironic that as Dr Cullen said not one speaker from the other side of the Chamber wants to talk about the Superannuation Fund? All the members on that side cowering behind their desks like the pack of so-and-sos they are—and I do not think the term “so-and-sos” is unparliamentary—know exactly what they did to national superannuation when they were in office. What we know is that when we got into Government we put some certainty back into the lives of pensioners. We said we would reverse the cuts that members opposite made. We said we would make the pension no less than 65 percent of the average wage and we did. We inflation-indexed it and we set up the Superannuation Fund—a fund that Dr Brash and every party of the National Party has run around— 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Where is he? 
CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: I cannot respond to that because as the member knows I would be breaching the Standing Orders. Those members do not want to debate the matter because as Dr Cullen said they want to abolish it. I look forward to going to Mr Heatley’s and Mr Carter’s electorates and to every electorate around this country to tell Grey Power and the pensioners what they would get under a National Government. Let us add it up. If a party says it will make tax cuts then that means less revenue. If a party—the National Party—says it will abolish the Superannuation Fund then as Dr Cullen pointed out how will it guarantee as the National Party now says it will the current levels and the current age of eligibility—although on this it now says “maybe”? One of the ways to do that would be to sell public assets and we know that that is about as popular as some members on that side in their obscurity. We know that Landcorp Kiwibank and all the very profitable good going concerns and State-owned enterprises such as New Zealand Post and others that people iconify and that this country wants to see maintained and held by the Crown would under that crew over there be gone. They would be history—on the block. 
If I were a pensioner or even maybe as Dr Brash has pointed out a person now in my 50s I would be shaking in my boots because under Dr Brash there would be no superannuation fund although there would be a tax cut that would mean less revenue. But then the numbers and the mathematical rationale stop. No one knows how under a National Government the pension at the current levels and age of eligibility would be maintained as we have promised it will be. What we do now know of course is that that will not happen under a National Government. 
Dr Brash said this about people now aged 50: “I suspect that eventually—if not in five years then almost certainly in 10 or 15 years—we will have to have a look at the age of eligibility again”. He said that in the  
New Zealand Herald 
 on 4 March 2004. Prior to making that statement he said—in places all around this country except in this Chamber—that the age of eligibility would have to be raised to age 70. Even Mr Woolerton in a couple of years would have to wait. It speaks volumes that no member of the Opposition after wanting to put the review of The Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation on the list will get up to speak on it—just as no member on that side will get up to debate the economy because it is growing; unemployment because it is decreasing; or employment because it is increasing. Opposition members cannot handle all that good news but they go around the country and scratch every little itch that certain members of the community want scratched. 
I say again that if National has an alternative to the Superannuation Fund that will guarantee the age of eligibility and inflation-proof levels at not less than 65 percent of the average wage then one of those geniuses on that side should get up and tell us. They have 18 months before the elections. Maybe Mr Heatley might get up or Mr Carter to explain to his constituents in the far north what National’s policy is on guaranteeing the age of eligibility and the levels of entitlement. Every pensioner including Mr Carter’s dear old mum whom he talks about so often in this place—and I am sure she is a dear old lady who is proud of her son—is now asking how her son and the National Party will guarantee her pension and the age of eligibility. National does not have a policy on superannuation and every New Zealander knows that. 
Reports noted.