Editorial: Why National has little credibility on super

Tuesday, July 9th 2002, 6:49AM

Several recent utterances on the issue of superannuation from the National Party really make one wonder whether it has got its mind around the whole issue.

The first example surfaced when its justice spokesman Wayne Mapp filled in for his finance counterpart David Carter at a Women in Super breakfast in Auckland just over a week ago.

Mapp told the gathering that a key plank of this month's campaign would be to oppose the establishment of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund.

Mapp trotted out more than half a dozen reasons why the Nats oppose the fund, and why they don't think it will work.

Undoubtedly some of these criticisms are valid, or at the very least raise some issues that are worth noting. Others are more peripheral and question the wisdom of putting away so much money to contribute such a small amount to future superannuation costs. (That point alone surely helps illustrate the magnitude of the future cost of NZ Super).

What really stunned the audience though was that the Nats oppose the idea that a portion of the fund will be invested offshore.

Mapp got up in front of a bunch of about 100 people from the savings industry and told them that investing a portion of the fund offshore was imprudent.

Pardon me, but isn't that what nearly everybody in that room does as part of their job.

One expects loopy statements about investment theory to come from the Greens, not the party that is meant to represent business interests.

This line, which National refers to as 'exporting capital', is one the party has been pushing for sometime.

Indeed leader Bill English dwelt on it during his opening address on television on Friday night.

He made comments that if a private company was doing this we would be up in arms. Doesn't he know what AMP, AXA, BNZ, Guardian Trust, ING, Tower, and all these other companies do? Likewise the Government Superannuation Fund is selling up its huge New Zealand bond portfolio and investing in shares. Have we heard the Nats say boo about this? Nope.

Besides Mapp telling fund managers what they do is wrong, the Nats then go on to offer tax incentives to help people to save.

This is bizarre. If tax cuts work and one extrapolates current trends in the industry and the following will happen.

People will invest their money into a balanced fund and a good chunk of that, say 50% of it, will be invested offshore into shares and bonds.

Therefore we have exactly the same thing happening, money is being saved and then 'exported'. The only difference is that in one instance the Government is doing it and in the other it's being done by individuals.

The other odd development from the Nats also surfaced in English's televised speech on Friday.

In it he went on a time warp and changed the name of the state pension from New Zealand Superannuation (its official name) back to National Superannuation (its old name).

One of the main points English was trying make is that National supported paying the state pension at 65% of the average weekly wage for each eligible married couple.

The none to subtle point is that by calling it National Superannuation he is trying to take credit for setting it at this rate.

Wasn't it National which tried cutting the pension a few years back (although they deny plans to change the way it was calculated were a cut), wasn't it Labour that put it back up to the 65% mark?

Sure all this is playing politics in an election campaign, but it's still not on.

The public don't trust politicians on super after years of broken promises. If politicians keep twisting the facts for short-term political gain like this then they will never earn the public's trust on this issue.

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