National will cut Superannuation, Alliance leader Jim Anderton predicted today following National's decision not to support the Super Fund.

"No party can duck the hard question of how to provide for the future of retirement incomes," Jim Anderton said.

"Either taxes will have to be increased steadily to provide for Superannuation or Super will be cut.

"The Labour-Alliance Coalition Government's Super Fund smoothes tax increases over decades. National's refusal to support the Fund, along with its tax cuts, means National will cut Super.

"I predict that National will announce a policy that involves some kind of tax incentive for private saving. This will be a hidden cut to the rate of Superannuation because it means that those who can't afford to save for themselves will not get the same level of publicly-provided Superannuation as those on higher incomes.

"The strength of the present superannuation scheme is that someone on my income gets the same publicly-provided retirement income as, for example, a woman who spends a large part of earning life out of the paid workforce. One of the main reasons Winston Peter's scheme failed was that it provided for unequal rates of superannuation.

"The National Party can't have it both ways. Every party that is opposed to the Super Fund has to state what taxes would be increased to pay for Super in the future. If parties don't specify their tax increases, then any promises about maintaining the level of Super are empty, because they will cut it," Jim Anderton said.

Ends

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>