Woolerton R Doug: KiwiSaver Bill — Third Reading 
Woolerton R Doug: KiwiSaver Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:633;Page:5003] 
R DOUG WOOLERTON (NZ First) 
: 
 New Zealand First supports the KiwiSaver scheme. We say that right upfront. In doing so I would like to congratulate the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the way in which he conducted the meetings. I give due credit to my colleagues on both sides of the table and most of all to our officials who guided us through and helped us with the tricky bits. 
Before I came to the Chamber I congratulated Mr John Key on his statesmanlike address. He was far less cheeky and far more serious today than he was last night. I congratulated him on that. He said: “Doug do a return favour and say something nice about the National Party for a change.” In actual fact I say a lot of nice things about the National Party but I will give John Key a hand up and say that he and the National Party—whenever they come to the Treasury benches however long that may take—will retain the KiwiSaver scheme. They may enhance it they may change it but they will retain the KiwiSaver scheme. That is my favour to Mr John Key because he is bursting and wanting to tell the people of New Zealand that but he cannot. He cannot because he is being whipped along a certain line. He has a monetarist for a leader and he cannot deviate from the cold heartless path of National Party monetarism. But he would love to. He knows that National has to get those critical votes in the centre-left to win. So I will do it for him. Mr Key will retain the KiwiSaver scheme when he is in a position to do so forever and ever and ever. 
 New Zealand First believes in taxation incentives and we are pleased to see them in this bill—albeit they were put in late and albeit they were put in as the National Party members correctly say without discussion in the select committee. New Zealand First supports this bill because we believe that the Government should lead savings regimes. It should lead them in a responsible manner and give the message to the public. 
It is sad that we have lost our savings culture in this country. I believe that we know when that happened—it happened with the changes that both Labour and National indulged in in the early 1980s. Back then the market prevailed and the market was going to supply everything. Unfortunately the market did not give the message to the average person that he or she should save and put a bit aside for the future and that the Government would help with that. So savings in this country dropped. The KiwiSaver scheme recognises that fact acknowledges it and goes out to do something about it. We applaud that the Government has taken a leadership role and we endorse this bill enthusiastically. 
This is not a matter of having a situation where we hope everything will work; this is a clearly thought-out bill that has certain objectives and will provide certain outcomes. One of the objectives is to involve people in the financial markets—to involve people in saving and to get them in the door of the financial institutions. One would think that National members would applaud that as many of them are involved in these institutions. One would think that they would say that it is a good thing. Mr Key actually does think that but he cannot say so today. It is a good thing to involve people in finance and to help them with financial literacy. We think that the default providers will be basically the big firms. We tried in this bill to involve some smaller firms and I joined with the National Party in saying that we had some concerns that the more entrepreneurial people as we saw it perhaps would not be involved and that it would be left to the big old firms to administer this scheme. However providers have told us that they will use this scheme as a door and go after the people who come in that door and that they will perhaps add other enhancements to the scheme—insurance additional payments or whatever. 
This bill helps people to become economically literate and we in New Zealand First see that as a big part of this bill. Saving is a habit saving is a culture and saving is something that one has to start young to have the full benefits of it in later life—or even in middle life. I can see that mums and dads all over the country will encourage their children to become involved in this scheme—especially mums because they are usually the tough ones in the family. Fathers usually take a more laid-back attitude to these things in my experience—certainly unfortunately I have done so. 
This bill has an opt-out clause not an opt-in clause. People will automatically be a part of this scheme when they sign up to work. If they change their mind and they want to opt out they have to make a conscious decision after 2 weeks of employment to do so. I would suggest that there is something wonderful about this. Let us consider for example a young man who goes home after work. His mum looks at his pay packet and asks: “How is the savings going son? How is the job going?”. The son answers: “Mum I just opted out of the KiwiSaver scheme.” There would be hell to pay in that household. Mum would be on the case—she would tell junior to get back to work and sign himself up and get back into the race. It is not until we reach middle age that we really understand the wisdom of what our mum or grandma told us which was to be cautious with our money to save for the future to live cleanly and to do all of the sorts of things I have done. We have a situation that makes it harder for people to get out of the scheme and New Zealand First applauds that. We think that that will go a huge way towards making the scheme a success. 
I know and the Opposition has pointed out and the Government clearly understands that there will never be the take-up that everybody would wish. It is a pipedream to expect every New Zealander to participate in this and hang on to it forever as they should. But it is certainly a responsibility of us all to make sure that people understand the need for saving and the value of the scheme and to do everything we can—by word of mouth by encouraging our family by advertisements and by other means at our disposal—to make sure that young Kiwis especially stay in this scheme because it is in their interest to do so. 
One of the things that has interested me—and it is one of the differences between both sides of the table—is that National members God bless their souls have continued to come from the perspective of dare I say it being rather more sophisticated financial operators than the rest of the country are. I know that they could probably give better advice on where to put one’s money if they were advising their own family but this is not necessarily a scheme for financial sophisticates. This is for the average person in New Zealand and I for one and New Zealand First for one party believe that it is a pretty good attempt. It gets us back to a place we should never have left years and years ago with the Government strongly encouraging savings amongst its citizens.