New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill

There is so much competition for the call, Mr Chair! Part 2 of the bill relates largely to amendments to the Income Tax Act that are consequential on the establishment of fund investment vehicles under new section 59A in clause 7. It is a relatively non-controversial part of the bill and one that the Labour Party will support.

A couple of points arise when we look at section HR 4B, which is being substituted by clause 13 of the bill, around the way in which the activities of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund are considered within the Income Tax Act. What it really does raise when we look at that—and it is a relatively straightforward application of those rules to the way in which these funds will be created. It is important for the sake of the transparency of the fund that fund investment vehicles are now specifically noted, because they have not existed before, and that all activities that the superannuation fund undertakes are currently noted within the Income Tax Act. So it is a sensible and transparent way of establishing that these are here. But it does raise the issue of the question of the payment of tax by the Superannuation Fund.

We have had some conversations in the Committee tonight about what size the Superannuation Fund might have been, had the Government continued to invest in it and make contributions to it. Mr Bishop in one of his earlier contributions was bemoaning what stupidity it would be to borrow money in order to invest in a fund such as this. I would, perhaps, put the question to Mr Bishop as to what he would do if offered the prospect of, I do not know, a return of around 20 percent when he could borrow money at—oh, I do not know—around 3 percent or 4 percent. What would he do in response to that? That would be, I would have thought—from a layperson’s point of view—quite an important and useful thing to be able to do because of the ability of the Crown, particularly, to borrow at such low rates and because of the impressive performance of the fund thus far.

The way that this relates to this part of the bill is that the Superannuation Fund is the biggest taxpayer in the country. That is right, I think—is it not, Mr Bishop? It is the biggest taxpayer in the country. Although we can concern ourselves with the amount of money that the fund might have earned for itself as it went through this, it is also a question of the amount of tax that it might have paid had contributions been restored. There is a debate, of course, about whether or not the Superannuation Fund should be a payer of tax in that, but, certainly, if we think about the levels of forgone revenue that the fund would have got, we are talking about billions of dollars of tax here, potentially, not being paid, as provided for under Part 2 of this bill. It is just another reason to contemplate the folly of this Government in not having continued to build this fund.

We have already heard in this Chamber tonight that the history of National’s interaction with the Superannuation Fund is a very sorry one because it played politics with it when it first arrived in Parliament. Michael Cullen’s whole mission as the Minister of Finance was to help establish long-term supports for the core Government provisions that were needed. You know, that is why he left KiwiSaver to this House as a legacy. That is why he left the Superannuation Fund to this House as a legacy, because he could foresee that we needed a stronger base for an ageing population. We needed a stronger base to ensure that we had our own money, which we could invest. We have heard the story many times in this Chamber of what would have happened if the then National Government had not trashed the Kirk fund. Around $285 billion worth of investment potential in our country was taken away in an election bribe many, many years ago. So National’s attitude has been poor around this fund.

We have now got a situation where we have seen losses. We have had a number of figures thrown around the Chamber tonight, but more than $10 billion—quite a bit more than $10 billion, actually—could have been added to the fund that was not added to the fund because the National Government made a political decision. It decided, in its words, to “borrow” money for tax cuts. It decided that was the priority, rather than making an investment in a fund that will pay out in the future for superannuation and rather than making an investment—

💬 Andrew Bayly: The tax cuts were fiscally neutral.

“Fiscally neutral”! Andrew Bayly says that the tax cuts were fiscally neutral. He is still working off the 2010 talking points. They were not fiscally neutral, I can let Mr Bayly know. That is not what happened. They were tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefited those on the highest incomes. They were given at a time when the Government told us there was no money to do anything. It had to cut back on all kinds of measures, but there was money to do that. But the point I was making to Mr Bayly was that, actually, if you apply the rhetoric of not borrowing money for the Superannuation Fund, you cannot then suddenly dispense with that rhetoric for what the Government did do with the money that it had, which was to give tax cuts.

But the point that I am bringing back to Part 2 of the bill—which we do support—is to say that this is the part of the bill that relates to the interactions with the Income Tax Act. This fund, had the National Government actually committed to making the contributions it could have made, would have been paying to the Crown, I would venture to suggest, at least $1 billion in tax that has now been forgone. That just typifies the attitude of the National Government to this fund.

I just want to take a short call to respond to Mr Robertson’s remarks. This deals with Part 2 of the bill, which, of course, is clauses 10 to 14, dealing, primarily, with the Income Tax Act 2007. I just want to rebut the idea—the proposition that Mr Robertson made—that, basically, if someone can borrow at 3 percent or 4 percent, the Crown’s cost of capital, and invest and make a 20 percent return, then it is lunacy not to do so, OK? On the face of it, that is true. But let us take off the rose-tinted, rear-vision mirror glasses and just think the other way, which is that we had done that—that somebody had gone out and borrowed at 3 percent or 4 percent, or maybe even higher than that, and had lost 20 percent; not gained 20 percent, not improved the asset value by 20 percent, but actually lost. That is a conceivable scenario at the time of the global financial crisis, when global equities were tanking. It is highly conceivable that the Crown would have lost money. So it is all very well, 8 years on, to look back and say “Well, we would have made 10 percent. We would have made this. If only the dastardly National Government had not done that.”—that is all very well. I can understand why the Labour Party wants to run that line as a political attack, except for the fact that it is equally plausible that the Crown and the Government would have lost 20 percent, or even more perhaps.

You will remember that this was at a time when the global economy was in total turmoil. Global equities were tanking, and to say that the New Zealand Government should have borrowed money at a time of great global uncertainty in order to invest in risky assets that were extremely volatile is naive. Why do we know that what we did as a Government was the right thing? Well, Michael Cullen, the Svengali of the left, the social democratic paramount chief, when he set up the New Zealand Superannuation Fund in 2002, said that it was only going to be invested in by the Crown at times of surpluses. It was his attempt to squirrel away the money so that the National Party at the time would not spend it on tax cuts. That is what he said. Right? We can argue about whether or not that was right or wrong, but what he said was that it was to be used only at a time when we had surpluses, not when the Crown was borrowing to invest in the share market. So the very man whom the Labour Party has spent the last 2 hours lauding, and to whom it continues to bend the knee all the time—go down to the Auckland Fabian association to hear from him about how Labour needs to reclaim the political momentum, and all of the advice that he gives—that guy, the guy who set up the fund that the Labour Party has benevolently named after him, at least in the vernacular, he himself does not support what the Labour Party is advocating now.

Actually, the Labour Party has form on this, because at some point the Labour Party members had a road to Princes Street conversion and they decided that what National had done with the Superannuation Fund was a good idea. It was David Shearer, in 2012, who turned up at the Wellington Employers’ Chamber of Commerce—and I think Grant Robertson was deputy then; he may not have been; at least he was a senior strategist inside the leadership team—and he said: “We’ve decided that until we are back in surplus, any new spending will have to be paid for out of existing Budget provisions, new revenue, or by reprioritising.” That was David Shearer in 2012, when he was leader of the Labour Party. I know that they have changed their position now and that they have gone back to the typical left-wing orthodoxy that was the case under Phil Goff, that was the case under David Cunliffe, and that presumably is the case under Andrew Little—and quite possibly will be the case under the new leader of the Labour Party, Carmel Sepuloni. I know her time is coming. She is making a run from the second benches, from the whip position and the sterling work that she is doing in social development, railing against vouchers, social development, and the National Government’s investment approach of trying to get people back into work. I know that she is making a run, but anyway—the Chair is asking me to shorten it up—I just want to make the point that the Labour Party members are all over the place on this issue.

Actually, when it comes to superannuation policy more generally, they are in the middle of a review. Grant Robertson is rampaging around the country with the amusingly titled Future of Work Commission, and we have got Andrew Little musing about raising the superannuation age or maybe even means-testing it. David Clark just about 1½ hours previously in the debate on a previous part of this bill—

Thank you, Mr Chair—oh, what a relief! Well, the future of work—I was wondering where that member, Chris Bishop, was going with that. The Future of Work Commission, I am happy to inform the member, is proving to be a great boon to our engagement with the public. It is very popular. Everybody has a view on the future of work. I suspect that member was about to expound some more, had he had the time to do it, because, actually, everyone has a view on where work is going. Work affects everybody and, of course, no matter where you come from politically it is something that people want to engage on. So I thank that member for raising that—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Come back.

—but the Chair rightly draws me back to the bill at hand, and I am only too happy to speak to Part 2 of the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Amendment Bill, if I could only jolly find the thing, because I am told it contains a number of amendments to the Income Tax Act. If somebody does have a copy of the bill, I had a couple of things I wanted to say, but I wanted to jog my mind just to see what they were. Thank you very much, colleague. I was distracted by that member opposite—and laugh well he might—but I was distracted by his comments on the future of work, which, of course, are entirely relevant, although not to this debate.

Amendments to the Income Tax Act—ah, yes. The amendments that could have been in here but are not are the ones that I wanted to look at. We know that there are many things, as I said in my earlier contribution on Part 1, that could have been done on retirement savings that this Government has not done, and right here is a paucity of vision, again, in Part 2, because what we have here are the minutiae of how this bill affects the Income Tax Act. There are sensible things in here—do not get me wrong. There are sensible things in here that we should be doing, which we on this side agreed to. Of course we agreed to all of it in select committee, as did the members opposite, who are now backtracking on one or two matters. But in here we do not see, for example, provisions relating to the Income Tax Act in respect of resuming contributions to the fund, because the Government has not done it. It has not done it. It has forgone $10 billion in revenue—$10 billion it would have got had it resumed those payments—but here we do not see any kinds of amendments in that respect. We do not see any amendments that plan for a future where we have secure retirement savings, because it is not the Government’s priority, and this is what we are faced with over and over again in this House.

We do see the fund investment vehicles affecting the Income Tax Act, and that is recorded here in subsection (3) of section HR 4B in clause 13 of Part 2—the various changes that are being made there—and they are sensible changes. Of course—

💬 Andrew Bayly: What changes are those?

The member opposite asks what those changes are, and I invite him to read the bill right here. They are right here in black and white. It is a very short bill, and I invite the member to read it. He is welcome to make a speech if he feels passionately about these technical amendments, but the broader point must be made that we are not arguing about the resumption of those payments to the Superannuation Fund, which would have seen New Zealand so much better off.

It would see us in so much better a position had Government members not been so short-sightedly focusing on borrowing instead for tax cuts—borrowing and borrowing. It is a Government that has borrowed more money than Muldoon, opposite there. I see those members hanging their heads. They have gone quiet, and well they might. They have failed to resume these payments, which would have increased the savings available to future generations, and that is because they are failing to have a plan for the future. On that side of the Chamber they are failing to plan for the future. We on this side would have liked to see some more dramatic changes in this part of the bill that reflected the resumption of savings to contribute to the most successful scheme in the world—we are told one of the best schemes in the world, if not the best scheme in the world. The Cullen fund, the one that Bill English called a dog, that has been hailed from Antarctica to Zimbabwe, is a superb fund, and something that does the job that we would hope it to do, if they would only let it.

Here in this bill—as I said in my previous contribution, we do support the overall intention, but we note again that it lacks the broad vision. The Government members lack the plan, they are not making the big steps that they ought to be making, and that is why we see in this part of the bill no big changes in respect of resumption of those payments or any tax implications that might be coming from that. Thank you.

Part 2 of this bill clarifies a few issues around the tax status of the fund investment vehicles, but I would also like to comment on the comments made by the previous speaker, David Clark, regarding a guy—well, he is talking about a guy I know indirectly. His name is Harry—“Harry Hindsight”. He is the most famous trader on the planet. He is a guy who was around when I was trading on the markets, and we always thought he was such a great guy because he just got it right every time.

Unfortunately, “Harry Hindsight” does not exist, and I ask the member: “How would you have reacted? In hindsight, would you have sold the Shanghai Stock Exchange Index in the last 10 days?”. Well, yes, you would have, because it has dropped 22 percent in the last couple of weeks. In hindsight I would not have bought that Shanghai Stock Exchange Index, and this is the issue—the rose-tinted spectacles that the Opposition members see through.

Borrowing and investing is what is known as leveraging your position and that increases the risk for the investor to something that could wipe you out—completely wipe you out. So imagine if you have got a 20 percent deposit on something and you buy it. You are up, you have leveraged 80 percent, and you have a movement that we saw in the last week on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, and you are out of business. That is why—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Come back.

Thank you, Mr Chair. That is why you do not borrow for investing in something that is a risky asset, and that is why we have not borrowed to continue the Cullen fund through times when the funds were simply not available.

“Harry Hindsight” is always right. There is absolutely no doubt about that, but even better than “Harry Hindsight” is people admitting when they have made mistakes. Not once has anyone on that side of the Chamber stood up and said: “Yes, you’re right. We should have put money back into this because it has earned 18 percent.” Since the global financial crisis it has been one of the best performing funds in the world, actually. The New Zealand Superannuation Fund does not have to consider whether it is going to sell or buy the Shanghai Stock Exchange and “Harry Hindsight” has nothing to do with reality.

The reality of the situation is that this is—

💬 Alastair Scott: It absolutely does. It is absolutely invested in the Shanghai exchange.

Let me outline the situation we have got at the moment. First of all, superannuation is going to become unaffordable. We all know this. The second point is that Michael Cullen set up a fund to mitigate the risk to the Government finances around an unaffordable superannuation burden. Thirdly, it has billions of dollars in it at the moment. Fourthly, this National Government—and Bill English admitted this—stopped contributions because he wanted to give tax cuts to the people of New Zealand, because that is what he promised. He did not have the wherewithal to say: “I made a mistake. We need to plan for our future. We need to plan for the future.” The fifth thing is we are still in a really bad position in terms of an affordable superannuation fund. Alastair, you must know this. You were a trader. You know how these markets work. You talk about leveraging. This is all about managing risk.

If I ask the question: “If we look at the risk 10, 12, 15 years out of a massive, unaffordable burden on the taxpayer or the risk of breaking an election promise and not giving money back, where do you think the New Zealand public would have sat?”. I firmly believe that they would have said: “We want certainty in our future. We want certainty in the future.” The Prime Minister could have managed that risk, but he did not. He chose not to take that risk at all, and as a consequence of this short-term thinking we have a superannuation fund that could be worth maybe $15 billion or $20 billion more. The Kirk superannuation fund, which I have heard members on this side of the Chamber talk about, would be worth $240 billion now. That is just predicated on an average rate of return from an average year. It could well be worth a hell of a lot more. So this is the difference between that side of the Chamber and this side. We like to plan for the future because we know “Harry Hindsight” is always right, but we do not want to second-guess “Harry Hindsight”. We want to ensure that, in fact, when we look back we can say that we did what was right, and this is the right thing to do.

I come to Part 2 of the bill, which is the part we are talking about. It is quite technical. But what it does do is it amends sections of the Income Tax Act 2007 so that these investment vehicles or companies in which an interest is held by the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation will not be subject to exemption for public authorities. There are a number of clauses in Part 2 that are actually quite technical. We have been through them, to a certain extent. If we were to get really technical, I think it would send everyone to sleep, not just my colleagues who were yawning but even those who are unfortunate enough to have to watch this on television. But it deals with things like activities relating to the Superannuation Fund itself. It deals with amendments to the Income Tax Act, which cut to the very essence of the Superannuation Fund. It talks about when the sections apply and how it is going to deal with these. It talks about the activities of the Crown, relating to the fund. We have done that to death when we have talked about the rights of the Ministers and the Crown to intervene—when they should and when they should not, and why they would or would not, etc. We have also talked about fund investment vehicles. This is about the consolidation rules, continuity provisions, and other rules relating to groups of companies that apply to the Crown as owner of the funds, when an investment fund vehicle is referred to, etc.

You have heard members on this side of the Chamber say that this is actually an important piece of legislation. You have also heard them say that we actually supported Part 2 when it went through the select committee. You had no argument from us there. Where you do have an argument from us, where you do have a massive bone of contention, is how we manage the fund, what we do with it, how far we look out, and the sort of expectation we create for New Zealanders, who are now looking forward and asking “What does the future look like? Where am I going to be? Am I actually going to be entitled to superannuation?”, which has been the fundamental right of Kiwis ever since it was introduced by the first Labour Government.

I want an assurance from the Minister in the chair, the Hon Hekia Parata, that Part 2 is not going to effect a change to the principle that the fund should pay tax. It should pay tax like any other investor, despite the fact that it is Government-owned. That is the underlying principle that we currently have, and that is the principle that should continue. From time to time we hear claims—and I have even heard people who are very close to the Superannuation Fund questioning whether it should pay tax. The reason that it should pay tax is that otherwise it will be advantaged relative to other investors in the New Zealand market, and it would also be encouraged to weight its investments to investments in New Zealand where it would have a tax advantage on those investments investing in New Zealand, because it would not have to pay tax on those investments compared with investing overseas. That would cause it to weight its investments more into New Zealand than overseas, for the wrong reasons.

I want to have an assurance from the Minister in the chair that these amendments to the Income Tax Act 2007 and the amendments to sections CW 38 and CX 55 of that Act, made by Part 2 of this bill, do not affect the current status quo, which is that the Superannuation Fund should pay tax as other taxpayers do. For some people that is counter-intuitive because it is a Government entity paying tax, which decreases the amount that is left in the Superannuation Fund for the meeting of future superannuation, and means more going into the Crown coffers because it is paying tax. But none the less I think that is an important point in principle that was imposed in the original design of the principal Act. As we know, the Labour Party and Michael Cullen had more foresight—

💬 Brett Hudson: Dr Cullen was preparing it for privatisation, clearly.

Dr Cullen was preparing the Superannuation Fund for privatisation, clearly! I mean, I have heard some brain-dead comments from the Government on occasions, but, really, that takes the cake. You should be brought forward to the front bench. You would be very comfortable on the National front bench. Of course, this fund was created by the Labour Party and opposed by the National Party, so how that member could say that this was preparing it for privatisation—fact is stranger than fiction sometimes, is it not? No, that is not correct.

Indeed, that gives me licence, I think—responding to that interjection from the Government—to recount the fact, ad nauseam, really, which we have heard before, that we should take care in respect of the Superannuation Fund that we do not actually cause it to aid the privatisation agenda of any Government. Indeed, because some of New Zealand’s largest listed entities now include energy companies, one of the things that has happened through the Superannuation Fund since the Government privatised those entities is that we have cause to go from the Government balance sheet through direct ownership to the Superannuation Fund investments in privatised assets, if the Superannuation Fund has invested in either Genesis, Mighty River Power, or Meridian. That, of course, was one of the things that Dr Cullen was trying to guard against when he set the fund up, and he gave pretty clear directions that he did not want this fund to be weighted towards investing in New Zealand, because he knew that one way or another there was always a risk that National Governments would plunder the fund in order to achieve their other objectives.

💬 Chris Bishop: Oh, ha, ha!

We hear Chris Bishop laughing about that, but if there was a subscription by the Superannuation Fund in those privatised companies, it will have increased demand for those shares, and will therefore have had some effect on the price that was able to be achieved on the sale of those shares. It may well be that it did not invest in those shares, in which case that would not have happened, but if it did, it must have had an effect on demand and therefore an effect on price. And as Mr Bayly has already said, this fund is already the largest investor in New Zealand. It is far bigger than any KiwiSaver fund, far bigger than any private superannuation fund, and far bigger than any other investment fund of the Government, including the ACC fund. It is the largest investor in New Zealand. Therefore, it does have the ability, because of that size, to influence price.

So I invite the member opposite who interjected, Brett Hudson, to hang his head in shame and resile from those rather silly comments that he made at the start—

💬 Brett Hudson: Clearly he was more our side than your side, Mr Parker.

Say that again? Clearly—

💬 Brett Hudson: After all, Dr Cullen was the one who said: “Don’t borrow to invest money in the Super Fund.”

No, he did not say that.

💬 Brett Hudson: He said: “Only make contributions when you’re in surplus.”, Mr Parker.

No, Dr Cullen did not say that. No, Dr Cullen thought, indeed, that contributions to the Superannuation Fund should continue. Again, he is a very poor student of history, this particular member. I was here after the global financial crisis hit, after we lost Government; so was Dr Cullen. That member was not. And you will recall that we were critical of the Government for making that short-sighted decision. I think it is actually testament to the independence of the guardians that, despite the embarrassment to the Government caused by the guardians measuring the loss that the Government has caused to the Superannuation Fund by ceasing contributions, they have continued to calculate what would have been in the fund had those contributions continued.

That brings me to an inane contribution from one of Mr Hudson’s colleagues, who said it was always stupid to borrow to invest. Well, that is true if you are capital constrained, but the current Government has not been capital constrained, because it inherited very low levels of Government debt—zero net debt—and gross debt having been reduced from 38 percent to 18 percent of GDP. The member said that you can never beat borrowing rates—it would be silly. Well, of course, the Government’s stock rate is generally the lowest long-term rate to invest in, and you get higher rates of return if you invest in security or balanced portfolio bonds, as Mr Bayly knows well. So it should be no surprise to members on the other side that if they had borrowed, they would have achieved a rate of return—

💬 Alastair Scott: If, if, if—“Harry Hindsight”.

Actually, you know, the trouble with these guys is that they have got no foresight. I mean, it would be nice if occasionally they got one of these decisions in advance right. We are not saying that you should judge everything by hindsight, but it would be good if occasionally they got one right with foresight. They called it a dog; they were wrong. They now admit that they were wrong. They stopped investments when they should not have stopped them, but they cannot bring themselves to admit that, even though it was always obvious that the investment rate over the medium term exceeds the Crown cost of funds. They have not been able to acknowledge that that was a stupid decision, too.

I have found the debate this evening very interesting—quite fascinating—and a lot of it has revolved around the question of whether it would have been appropriate to continue to make contributions to the Superannuation Fund during the period when the Government was borrowing in order to carry out a range of activities, actually. I love the way that the National Party tries to sort of reduce this down to borrowing in order to put money into the Superannuation Fund. The Government has borrowed to an astonishing level, actually—to levels that no other Government ever has before—but in order to do a range of things.

One of the things that the Government borrowed to do was to provide tax cuts. There are really good arguments why you do not provide tax cuts, especially tax cuts to the wealthy. There might have been an argument for it during the period of recession and then the very slow period of growth after the global financial crisis. There may have been an argument for tax cuts if the majority of the money returned to the citizens of New Zealand had gone to those with the least, because those with the least have to go out and spend that money, because they are struggling to make ends meet as it is, and that would actually have provided the economic stimulus that was the argument the Government made for providing tax cuts while it was borrowing heavily just in order to keep the ship afloat. But no, the Government did what National Governments do. It was true to form and it gave tax cuts to the most wealthy, which was wonderful for the people who were most wealthy but did very little to stimulate the economy.

During that period of time it may well have been prudent—and, in fact, looking back, it would have been incredibly prudent—to carry on contributing to the Superannuation Fund. But, actually, the point I want to make is this: it is that achieving surpluses is actually incredibly important for the Government, because if you are in surplus you remove that debate. It is actually a really simple decision to make, if you are in surplus, making a contribution—what the size of the contribution is might be a question for debate, but making a contribution to a superannuation fund then is an easy choice to make. I accept that it is a more difficult choice to make when you are having to borrow for a range of things, but if you are in surplus, it is an easy choice to make, and that is why achieving surplus is important. Alistair Scott is nodding away.

The Prime Minister is not so sure about whether achieving surplus is quite so important. It was important—it was a very important—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! [Interruption] Order!

Well, it is relevant to this bill, because what we are talking about is actually saving for New Zealand’s future—putting contributions into the Superannuation Fund in order to ensure that universal superannuation is actually available for future generations. That is actually one of the great issues facing this nation at the moment and should be facing that Government: how do we make sure that universal superannuation remains available not just today, not just in 10 years’ time, but in 20 years’ time, 30 years’ time, 40 years’ time? How do we ensure that it is still available? In the face of an ageing population, in the face of a growing number of superannuitants in comparison with the working population, in the face of all those challenges, what do we have to do to ensure that universal superannuation is still available? That is why the Cullen fund—

💬 Todd Barclay: Keep National.

No, not keep National, actually; the exact opposite of keep National, because if the National Party had been in Government in 2002, there would be no Cullen fund. There would be no Cullen fund, because members opposite are obsessed with hindsight, and they have got absolutely no foresight. That is classic National Party thinking: always thinking about the past, never thinking about the future. So actually, if you want to ensure that New Zealanders in the future will be able to rely on universal superannuation, what we need more than ever now is a Labour-led Government, a Government that can actually look into the future, a Government that actually believes in sovereign wealth funds and believes in putting money aside now to save for the future. That is not what the National Party wanted to do—not what the National Party wanted to do at all. It wanted to blow it all on tax cuts for its mates here and now, not worrying about the future.

Members opposite have gone quiet now, because they know I am right. This is an important piece of legislation because it will help make the Superannuation Fund—

I move, That the question be now put.

A party vote was called for on the question that the question be now put.

Just while the Clerk is adding these up, there can be no discussion, no noise whatsoever, when votes are being taken. I will ask you to respect that.