SpeechHon Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'm enjoying the tone of this debate the references to Baldwin Street Dunedin Hospital and of course the Superannuation Fund. It is good to debate with members and I look forward to hearing around the House how different parties approach this. It's good to see the tentative support from across the House at least to the select committee stage.I am very confident that the concern expressed by members opposite around independence is covered off in this bill quite explicitly and appropriately so. It is incredibly important that this fund acts independently that it is independent from political influence and when that's laid down in statute it becomes incredibly clear and sacrosanct. So the bill itself does not alter the guardians' independence from political influence in relation to investment decisions. I just think that needs to be stated clearly and on record. That's provided for in section 64(2) of the Act for any members that want to check that up.Now it's very much a story of then and now that we're looking at today. When the fund was established in 2001 the rationale for the control restriction was that the fund's purpose was to get exposure to investments and not to own businesses for itself. And of course it has been very successful in that regard. It has won numerous international awards and one only has to go and visit the guardians' website to see the lists of awards that it's won including a lot of global recognition for outstripping the performance of other sovereign wealth funds around the world. It's done extraordinarily well.But when it was established it hadn't of course established that track record of performance. That only came over time as it invested did so successfully and demonstrated its ability to do that year after year. It's also true that the environment's changed. When the fund was established originally it was very uncommon for sovereign wealth funds to take a direct controlling interest in investments. But that's changed—the practice around that has changed. And of course as the fund itself has matured in size in capacity it's grown it's shown itself to be a very prudent investor has got those returns that will ensure New Zealand's future superannuation is provided for as was intended and has done that I think in a way that has outstripped all expectations and we need to acknowledge that in this House.Interestingly Michael Woodhouse brought this up earlier in the debate anticipating that it would be spoken about—the very fact that National in 2009 suspended payments to this fund. On the guardians' website they have done the calculation of how much bigger this fund would have been had the National Party invested through their time as Labour Governments had and the fund itself would be $28.6 billion larger if the National Party had continued to make contributions such is the extraordinary return that they've made.Rachel Boyack: How much?Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: $28.6 billion larger had the National Party continued to contribute. But that's the kind of thing that makes them nervous.And we heard it from ACT over there who were very much of a view that we shouldn't be investing on behalf of New Zealanders; we should be only investing as individuals despite all evidence to the contrary in terms of the value of the investment and the returns that have been achieved. I think certainly in the ACT Party's case we can see that that's just ideological claptrap—don't let the facts get in the way of a good story!But I am pleased to see National tentatively supporting this. I encourage them to support it right the way through because it is a policy that benefits all New Zealanders and it is a good thing when a bill like this gets support across the House. We want that long-term investment. We want our citizens to benefit from the provisions that are made and from the extraordinary returns that the Superannuation Fund has secured over the years and I'm confident will continue to secure in the future.There are a couple of other points to make before I close. The beauty of having a controlling stake in organisations such as is proposed in this bill is that the fund will have more flexibility thus giving it the propensity to have even greater returns and also to influence ESG factors as well in their reporting—they can influence environmental social and governance things that are in the wider national interest too and that would be terrific to see. There are many more reasons to support this bill but my time is up.