Hon Bill English
Opposition Finance Spokesperson

8 March 2000

Govt defying public on superannuation

“Dr Cullen has confirmed today he is proposing a huge change to superannuation without a skerrick of public or political debate – at a time when New Zealanders want political agreement,” Opposition Finance spokesperson Bill English said today.

“New Zealanders want long-term security for their retirement and that can only be built on broad political agreement. However, the Government has scrapped the Super 2000 Taskforce and is now well advanced in implementing its own scheme.

“In the BPS Dr Cullen is allocating billions of dollars over the next four years to a Government investment fund – that is taking the issue a long way ahead of any public or political consensus.

“From what we know so far, it looks like a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Running higher debt to GDP is no way to secure a sustainable super scheme.

“It also looks like a form of compulsory savings – and New Zealand voters have well and truly rejected that.

”Otherwise the BPS is just as we thought – the Government is riding a wave of growth and jobs created by National, but trouble is around the corner.

“The figures confirm what we have known for a long time – the Government has inherited a strong economy and for a year or two anyway, they can’t help but reap the benefits of that. It would take a fool or a vandal to mess up the economic fundamentals the Government has inherited, but just watch them.

“This Government will keep making changes like this to ACC which don’t make sense to anyone. In the pipeline we can already see the changes to the Employment Contracts Act, and the sure signs of slack management of billions of dollars in SOEs. In time these left-wing measures will choke the enterprise and innovation that creates new jobs and growth in the economy.”

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