PR: Kamikaze or killing time?
Finance Minister Michael Cullen gives his view on National's position on prefunding NZ Super.
Monday, July 24th 2000, 12:00AM
Dr Cullen was commenting on the superannuation policy statement the National finance spokesman, Bill English, delivered on Wednesday to the New Zealand SuperFund Conference in Wellington.
"Mr English said an incoming National government would plunder the proposed New Zealand Superannuation Fund and use the funding flow to cut taxes.
"If that is the message the National Party wants to take into the next election campaign, my message to the National Party is - "Make my day."
"It is kamikaze politics," Dr Cullen said.
"The New Zealand electorate is neither as short-sighted nor as selfish as National seems to think. New Zealanders will not vote for tax cuts for the wealthy at the cost of insecurity in old age for everyone else.
"Make no mistake, that is what Mr English is offering.
"He said in his speech that National was looking now at how the entitlement of current superannuitants and those close to the age of entitlement can be locked in and that they had not yet decided the age to which this security should extend.
"What that means, shorn of the technocratic language, is that the question for National is when the cut-off point should be, which generations should get a tax-paid pension and which left to fend entirely for themselves.
"The Government begins from the principle that a principled society cares for its elderly and that an adequate income in old age is a basic right of citizenship.
"The whole purpose of our prefunding proposal is to secure New Zealand Superannuation on a sustainable basis into the future. We think this is the fairest approach to take and that it will be seen as such by the public," Dr Cullen said.
"The only other options are: no pension, a savagely reduced pension, or much higher taxes to cover the costs of supporting the baby boomers as they retire."
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