Alliance offers superannuitants a cash boost
The Alliance will offer superannuitants a cash boost significantly larger than the cuts introduced by the Shipley Government this year.
Tuesday, July 6th 1999, 12:00AM
In a speech to Warkworth GreyPower today Alliance leader Jim Anderton said the cash boost for superannuitants was the first part of the Alliance's response to the Shipley Government's planned tax cuts.
"The Government is saying it will either reduce the top rate of tax or push out the threshold at which the top marginal rate of income tax applies. Either way, the 450,000 New Zealanders who rely on superannuation will get nothing.
"In two previous rounds of tax cuts, superannuitants have got just 29 cents a week.
"Now the Alliance is saying it's your turn."
The size of the cash boost the Alliance would offer would be announced around the time that its proposed tax scales were unveiled, but Jim Anderton assured his audience it would be 'at least double figures every week.'
The base rate of superannuation was cut by more than $5 a week on 1 April, when the Government allowed it to slip beneath the minimum value proposed in the Superannuation Accord, of 65% of average weekly ordinary time earnings. It's now down to 62.8%.
"If a National-Act government gets re-elected this year it will abolish NZ Superannuation. Publicly provided retirement incomes will be slashed to the level of the dole and means tested. If you own anything, such as a house, or if you have savings, you will be required to exhaust all of them before you can collect any superannuation. That's how National intends to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.
"The Alliance recognises that if you are a superannuitant, you need an immediate boost in your living standard. That's why we will make the push for a significant increase in cash in the hands of superannuitants a priority for the new Government," Jim Anderton said.
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