Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Mr Speaker thank you for the opportunity to take a short call on this bill—this important bill—the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income (Controlling Interests) Amendment Bill which was shepherded through by the Hon Grant Robertson and picked up by the Minister of Finance Nicola Willis and I commend them both on the excellent work on what has become a cross-partisan thing that all New Zealanders can be proud of: a superannuation scheme that invests directly in regional development projects. It is a driver of economic growth in our regions and in our cities and it's something which will provide for future generations in a way which is sustainable and that builds on those things that we hold dear. But this breakout of Kumbaya" in the House is a little bit ironic. On this side of the House on these Labour benches we believe in public ownership of strategic assets. We believe that the Government has a role in owning things like a superannuation scheme which goes out there and drives economic regional development by investing in the things we care about—by investing in our strategic industries and in making sure that New Zealanders have access to capital in exactly the ways we have heard from members on the Government benches tonight.But that Government has no economic plan beyond cutting public ownership of the services that we rely on—on the services which they are stripping 6.5 percent and 7.5 percent of all Government ownership of those services—and that flies directly in the face of all of those speeches that we have heard tonight from that side of the House. We've heard that Government ownership and that the public good is what we're getting out of this bill. Well this is something which is important here but it is not something that everyone agrees on and it is something that we need to think carefully about.So let's talk about what this bill does. It does allow the superannuation scheme to take those investment decisions to the next level and as you've heard from my colleague the Hon Dr Deborah Russell this represents a shift in gear for what the superannuation scheme can do because when we think about these controlling interests what do we mean by that? When it was set up it had a very specific mandate to act like an investment fund with no direct investment into companies because it wasn't in the business of owning specific companies or specific pieces of infrastructure or having any sort of guardianship over specific projects. But it has had a history in the last decade of investing in big projects which would have otherwise not been able to go ahead without its investments—things like in the last National Government large-scale housing developments. One of those was the Hobsonville Point development on the old airbase site. Investment from the Superannuation Fund enabled the development of each super block to then be sold on to developers who built houses on it. Without a large institutional investor that project would not have been able to progress in the way that it did and the civil works on those projects would have taken much longer. But the superannuation scheme still had to invest in that project alongside other smaller commercial investors because it was restricted in having a controlling interest.So what this bill does is it would allow strategic ownership where State ownership of a project is useful for the public good and that was something that the National Government believed in at that point. Building up our services that are available for all New Zealanders and increasing people's access to capital and increasing businesses' ability to get things done by having an institutional framework where investment was possible in those kinds of large-scale projects actually enabled business to be able to do what it needed to do and it enabled the building of houses in a way which let hundreds if not thousands of first-home buyers move into what is now a thriving area of the northwest of Auckland.My point here is that this is a sensible change but this is also a change which is grounded in Labour values: that the State should take a role in strategic assets which enables business to thrive and that the State should take a role in making sure that ordinary New Zealanders have the infrastructure and the services that they rely upon to thrive. The Superannuation Fund is a key part of that and may we always have this kind of cross-partisan belief in its value to all New Zealanders."