National says yes but won't sign
Thursday, September 11th 2003, 7:11AM
by Rob Hosking
Finance Minister Michael Cullen, answering a patsy question from a government backbencher last week, said National’s position is now less clear than it was during the election campaign last year.
But National says there has been no change.
“Our position remains the same, and we won’t be commenting further,” National leader Bill English says.
The party last year committed itself to the current “65 at 65” formula - payouts at 65% of the average wage when people turn 65. However, it hasn’t signed up to the part of the Superannuation Act that sets the state pension at that level.
National’s policy committee, headed by finance spokesman Don Brash, is currently considering superannuation.
However, National is understood to be currently focussing on other, more fertile political ground, such as the foreshore and Corngate, and is unlikely to release any further details on superannuation for some time.
Dr Brash has publicly mused on changing the retirement age, and previously, before being elected to Parliament, suggested he saw some merits in compulsion.
However, on that committee he is one of a number of MPs, and superannuation is an issue which has burned National so many times in the past the party appears to want to treat it with extreme caution.
Cullen taunted National MPs in the House, saying that while the Greens, United Future, and Jim Anderton’s Progressive party had signed up to the first part of the Superannuation Act, which guarantees current levels of payments, there had been no sign up from the main opposition party.
Act has committed to raising the retirement age to 68 and favours tax cuts to encourage private saving, rather than the government’s partially pre-funded scheme.
“The oddest response was from the National Party, which took nine months to respond and then had no position,” Cullen says.
A subsequent press release upped the vitriol, saying “even a weasel would blush” over National’s current position on superannuation.
Rob Hosking is a Wellington-based freelance writer specialising in political, economic and IT related issues.
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