Bishop Chris: KiwiSaver Budget Measures Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBishop Chris: KiwiSaver Budget Measures Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3804. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS BISHOP (National):I quite like Fletcher Tabuteau but I have to say that if I were a pupil in “Professor” Tabuteau’s economics class I would be quitting and asking for a refund because that speech was woeful. But I do like Mr Tabuteau.What a contrast it has been between last night and this morning. Last night at 5 to midnight the Government benches here were full. We had 30 or 40 Government MPs here backing our Ministers backing this Budget and backing these important bills that we are passing this morning and last night. There were only three or four Labour MPs last night at 5 to midnight. Something has twigged in the Labour Party overnight and that is that Andrew Little’s leadership is in mortal danger. What do we see this morning? They have flooded the Opposition benches—[Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I would actually like to hear what the member is saying.Hon Annette King: Yes but he should be talking about the bill.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): If I could hear what the member was saying I would know whether he was talking on the bill.CHRIS BISHOP: Thank you very much Mr Assistant Speaker. I was making the point that when we were debating the KiwiSaver Budget Measures Bill last night the contrast with this morning is very very stark. The Labour Party twigged overnight that Mr Little’s speech in the Budget reply debate on Thursday was so woeful that his leadership is now in danger. The Labour members have had to come down here this morning for this KiwiSaver bill and flood the Opposition benches to hear another appalling speech from Andrew Little about matters that are important to the country.It was an interesting contrast with the Budget and this bill was it not? We had the members on the Government benches outlining a clear programme of action including for this bill and the members on the Opposition benches had nothing to say—absolutely nothing—about the benefit increases the National Government is passing. The party of the dispossessed the party of the disenfranchised the party of the working poor the party of the workers and the party of beneficiaries—what did it have to say about the National Government’s increase in benefit levels? Not a sausage. It is disgraceful. Then the Labour members come down here for this bill and they cry crocodile tears about the prudent and sensible—prudent and sensible—cuts that the Government is making to KiwiSaver.Let us get some facts on the table. No. 1: there are 2.5 million people in KiwiSaver already. OK? That is fact No. 1: 2.5 million people in KiwiSaver. It has proven to be very very popular. When Michael Cullen set up KiwiSaver back in 2006 by this stage the prediction was that there would be 700000 people in KiwiSaver. That target has been smashed absolutely exceeded. It has been a huge success. It has been extraordinarily successful—far in excess of what the architects of the scheme would ever have predicted.But that leads to the second fact and this is the second fact that is important to remember. No. 2: the $1000 kick-start contribution has been very expensive. The Government has spent $2.5 billion over the last 7 years on the kick-start contribution. At the time of the global financial crisis and the Canterbury rebuild and at the time at which as the members opposite rightly and adroitly point out so often we are trying to get the books back into the black $2.5 billion is a decent chunk of change. The ongoing fiscal costs of that are also very expensive. It is very expensive and KiwiSaver has been proven to be popular.What that means now—and this is a very important point about this bill—is that this is now a “nice to have”. It is not necessary. There are 2.5 million New Zealanders in KiwiSaver already. Let us not forget the existing incentives that remain to continue in KiwiSaver—the member tax credit of $521 a year the employment contributions that employers are required to pay. So there are plenty of good reasons to join KiwiSaver and we on this side of the House are sure that we will continue to have it.Members opposite cry crocodile tears and there are huge amounts of hyperbole about how we are taking the ladder away. Well sorry but removing the $1000 kick-start contribution for joining an already generous scheme that will provide for people’s lives in the long term is not taking the ladder away from somebody. Taking the ladder away might be opposing important changes to benefit levels like the first ones that have been made in 43 years. The party of the dispossessed and the poor has nothing to say about the fact it is the National Government that is actually making life better for those least well off in our society.Then we get to what Labour has promised and the schmozzle it has had in the last couple of days about its stance on superannuation and its stance on KiwiSaver. Grant Robertson in one line spent $500 million of the next Labour Government Budget which hopefully will never happen. In the unlikely event that it does he spent $500 million in one line when he was asked on the Stuff chat website whether he would commit to bringing back the $1000 kick-start contribution and he said yes. OK that is fine. You can make that choice. It is the role of the Opposition to outline alternative fiscal spending plans. But that one line those three letters typed away—or that a staffer had typed on the Stuff chat website—cost the Government $500 million over 4 years and it is just in line with the Labour Party’s big spending agenda. You can add it to the very long spreadsheet that exists of Labour Party spending promises that Mr Cunliffe promised at the last election that Mr Shearer promised at the election before that and that Phil Goff promised at the election before that: the promise to start the Cullen fund superannuation contributions again the promise to bring back Moroccan cooking course subsidies.Remember that? Remember when the Labour Party was outraged about the fact that we were making middle-class people who wanted to do macramé classes and Moroccan cooking classes at their local high school actually pay for them themselves as opposed to getting money from the taxpayer for them to go and learn how to rub spices on chickens. How ridiculous! So we are going to add this very expensive promise to bring back the KiwiSaver kick-start contribution to the very long list of promises that the Labour Party has made. Labour members have absolutely no fiscal credibility whatsoever. They took us into recession before the global financial crisis they left us with a decade of deficits and now they have the temerity to come down to this House and complain about debt and about how we are not back into surplus. Well their record speaks for itself. It is appalling and they should be apologising to New Zealanders for it.This is an important part of the Government’s post-Budget measures to continue this economy on its growth track and to continue to provide support to the most vulnerable New Zealanders. It is telling that on a Saturday morning the Government is removing essentially a form of middle-class welfare a “nice-to-have” but something that is not necessary any more. We are removing that and instead we are supporting beneficiaries and the working poor. We find ourselves in this weird parallel universe where the Labour Party is supporting $1000 for people who frankly do not need it and opposing more money for the working poor whom they have liked to cry crocodile tears about for the last 9 years—disgraceful!