ACT Finance Spokesman Rodney Hide today said that eight superannuation experts had exposed Labour’s empty promise to elderly voters.

“Labour has promised that their new ‘New Zealand Superannuation Tax’ and ‘New Zealand Superannuation Fund’ will make ‘the problem of sustainability disappear’. This is dishonest nonsense.

“The experts say that Labour would have to raise an additional $3.7 billion a year by 2004 to ‘smooth’ the cost of New Zealand superannuation as Labour intends, that the policy is ‘more likely to increase the cost of New Zealand superannuation over the nest 30 years’, and that ‘Labour’s policies will hinder rather than help Kiwis prepare for their retirement’.

“Labour’s Dr Cullen has failed to provide any costings of Labour’s superannuation policy in his fiscal forecast released last week. Labour’s super promise is another empty one.

“I have written to Dr Cullen earlier this week asking him to detail the size of Labour’s “New Zealand Superannuation Tax” each year and the projected size of Labour’s “Superannuation Fund” over a generation. I doubt he will reply. I doubt he can.

The eight experts who agree that Labour’s super policies are fundamentally flawed are:

Michael Chamberlain, actuary, of MCA NZ Limited, Auckland

Leo Harper, financial adviser, Auckland

Dick Jessup, actuary of Melville Jessup Weaver, Wellington

Roger Kerr, economic, business and financial markets commentator Auckland

- Michael Littlewood, director, Planit Services Limited, Auckland; former member of the Task Force on Private Provision for Retirement 1991-92; author of How to Create a Competitive Market in Pensions: the International Lessons

Grant Niccol, chartered accountant and company secretary, Auckland

- Angela Ryan, economic consultant, Melbourne; former Secretariat Manager of both the Task Force on Private Provision for Retirement 1991-92 and the Periodic Report Group 1997

- Jeff Todd, company director, Auckland; former Chairman of both the Task Force on Private Provision for Retirement 1991-92 and the Periodic Report Group 1997

ends

© Scoop Media

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>>