Employment Relations (Protection for Kiwisaver Members) Amendment Bill

on behalf of Dr Tracey McLellan: I move, That the Employment Relations (Protection for Kiwisaver Members) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

I nominate the Finance and Expenditure Committee to consider the bill. Madam Speaker, you’ll note that I am not Dr Tracey McLellan, and it is a pleasure to take a call on behalf of my good friend and colleague and to present, on this members’ day, this bill that she has drafted, which is the Employment Relations (Protection for Kiwisaver Members) Amendment Bill.

Today, I’d like to talk about a bill that impacts the working lives of millions of New Zealanders. It’s a relatively simple but effective bill that will restore financial protections taken away by the National Government in 2008, ensuring New Zealanders aren’t disadvantaged in the golden years of their retirement. We firmly believe this is a practical step in the right direction for employee rights and financial planning.

Let’s start with KiwiSaver. Since its inception in 2007, KiwiSaver has become an integral part of financial planning for around 3 million New Zealanders. That is a lot of us putting aside some money every week for the future, looking forward to what will hopefully be a comfortable retirement. Because KiwiSaver contributions are generally made over many decades, any small advantage gained or disadvantage incurred at the outset of employment can have a significant cumulative effect later on down the track. It’s important, then, that we make sure KiwiSaver is a fair and robust scheme—this was the intention when it was developed. But in 2008, just a year after KiwiSaver was established, the National Government of the day took away some key protections for those enrolled in the scheme. As it stands, an employer isn’t legally required to offer the same terms or benefits to someone enrolled in KiwiSaver as they do to someone who is not. What that means is that employers can offer employees lesser terms, fewer benefits, or even reduced chances for training and promotion, simply because they are enrolled in KiwiSaver. This is patently unfair and undermines the notion of equal opportunity that New Zealanders value.

I acknowledge that most employers do the right thing, but there is room under the current law for some to take advantage and cut corners, and when such opportunities arise, a small number of people will do just that. This piece of legislation seeks to close the existing loopholes and ensure parity for employees, regardless of their retirement arrangements. It seems almost absurd that these loopholes are in place currently, but it was National’s Employment Relations Amendment Act 2008 that opened the door to this inequity, and it’s up to a Labour Government to close that door and ensure a fairer KiwiSaver system. That National bill was a significant piece of legislation that enabled employers to ride roughshod over many employee rights. So it’s not too surprising that the last provision of the amending Act, the consequential amendment to the KiwiSaver Act 2006, was largely lost. It is this consequential amendment that we are seeking to rectify with this member’s bill.

This is a relatively straightforward bill, but I would like to go over some of the key elements. Most significantly, the bill seeks to ensure equal terms of employment. It mandates that employers must offer the same terms of employment to employees who are KiwiSaver members as to those who are not—if that sounds simple and fair, that’s because it is. The bill amends the Employment Relations Act 2000 to introduce what is known as an “adversely affected” test. This is essentially a checklist to help figure out if an employee is being treated unfairly just because they have chosen to be part of the KiwiSaver scheme. The test looks at various aspects of a worker’s employment terms such as salary, work conditions, benefits, opportunities for growth, and so on. If any of these areas are lacking in comparison to employees without a KiwiSaver account, that’s a red flag and action needs to be taken.

The “adversely affected” test is an important component of this bill, so I’d like to delve into it a little bit here. Obviously, it is important to determine who is being discriminated against because of their superannuation choices, and the test will establish that. An employee’s employment can be considered adversely affected if, for example, they are not offered the same salary or wages as other comparable employees or don’t receive commensurate fringe benefits such as the use of a work vehicle or free, subsidised, or discounted goods. The “adversely affected” test also extends to equal opportunities. If an employer does not offer opportunities for training, promotion, and transfer to employees on an equal basis—irrespective of their membership in a KiwiSaver scheme or a complying superannuation fund—then that employee can likewise be considered adversely affected.

Another amendment this bill makes to the Employment Relations Act 2000 is to facilitate legal recourse for discrimination. Specifically, the bill makes it easier for those employees who are considered adversely affected by the aforementioned test to file a personal grievance. This provides the legal framework for those discriminated against due to their KiwiSaver membership to seek recourse. The bill will come into effect three months after it receives Royal assent. From that point on, the terms of new employment contracts and amendments to existing ones will need to be in line with these changes. The bill also contains some transitional provisions, which will apply to employment agreements entered into after a certain date, and to variations of older agreements made after that date.

The Labour Party is proud to be the party that introduced KiwiSaver to New Zealand and it is important that the fundamental principles of KiwiSaver are upheld. We have too many people in New Zealand currently retiring without superannuation schemes of a large enough balance to be able to retire comfortably. It is important that Governments do everything that we can to ensure that people are able to save as much as they are able in a fair way, so that when they retire, they have enough to live on at that time. It’s particularly important for women—and we know that women are often subject to discrimination in employment, and that is another matter that this Government has been working to address through pay equity. We know that women regularly retire with a lot less in their retirement savings than men do, and this bill—alongside supporting workers who often don’t have strong bargaining rights—will support women, who are often discriminated against in their employment.

At the end of the day, this bill is about fairness. It’s about making sure that everyone gets a fair go, whether they’re saving for their retirement through KiwiSaver or not. It’s a straightforward but significant step that corrects a wrong and it upholds the values that we hold dear here in New Zealand. This bill is a piece of good, common sense legislation that strengthens the financial futures of New Zealanders and upholds our principles of fair play.

On behalf of my colleague, Tracey McLellan, I look forward to seeing this bill progress through the Finance and Expenditure Committee in the coming months, and I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s my pleasure to speak on the behalf of—or open up the batting, as it were, for the National Party, on the Employment Relations (Protection for Kiwisaver Members) Amendment Bill. I’m sure there’ll be a lot of keen anticipation as to whether we will be supporting this bill in the first reading, and I can inform the House that we will support it at first reading to be considered by the Finance and Expenditure Committee.

Look, I think, you know, Michael Cullen was an interesting finance Minister. He was—up until Grant Robertson, I suppose, probably knocked him off the perch—I think, one of the most rapacious Labour Party finance Ministers; a great tax collector. He kept on collecting taxes and never ever yielded any kind of tax relief. But when it came to the introduction of KiwiSaver as an institution in this country, I think he is one of the relatively few members of Parliament who can point to a significant contribution, because there’s no question that many New Zealanders have been able to and encouraged to save more for their retirement because of this scheme. In a perfect world, people should have every ability to choose how they want to save—whether they want to pay off their mortgage more or spend their money at particular times of their life—and so we were always a little hesitant around such a scheme. But, I think, time has indicated that it has worked well, and so that is why we have continued to—or we did, under the John Key Government, and we continue now to support the scheme.

It’s quite different to Australia. A lot of people will say the New Zealand sort of, contributions—near 3 percent or 4 percent in many instances—are well short of the scale of the contributions in Australia, for example, which are much larger. The only point I’d make there is that they have, ultimately, a very different approach to superannuation in Australia. In New Zealand, we have universal superannuation. Everybody over the age of 65 has access to it—it’s not means-tested. We went through a period of our history where we experimented with that and it wasn’t well received, so we have a universal superannuation. So the purpose of the saving through KiwiSaver is not to, kind of, replace that pension but to augment it, to give people that little bit extra so that they can have a more comfortable retirement while also being able to rely on their universal superannuation. The Australian system is different, really. Ultimately, they have a meanstested system, and it is, in effect, a replacement for Government-funded superannuation for those who have the ability to save a lot over their course of their working environment.

So I think we need to be careful about just following the Australian pattern, because it leads to a very different outcome, which I don’t think is necessarily better. I think our approach—universal superannuation with every encouragement for people to add to that through KiwiSaver—is a good approach.

Now, this bill—what does it do? Well, it has identified a potential problem, which has been identified by the introducer of this bill, Tracey McLellan, whereby it is possible for employers to fiddle around with the arrangements between workers who take up KiwiSaver and those workers who don’t. As everybody knows, it’s not compulsory in New Zealand currently to have KiwiSaver, and some people don’t, for a whole variety of reasons. So it is possible in theory that an employer might offer particular encouragement or different benefits to employees that don’t take up KiwiSaver and therefore don’t require them to put in the 3 percent or 4 percent that they’re putting in. This legislation deals with this, and, in essence, forces employers to treat them all the same. Then, any KiwiSaver contribution is on top of that. Then, it gives the ability for a personal grievance to enforce that.

Now, it’s often the case in these circumstances, when it comes to tinkering with the regime that that KiwiSaver operates in, that there can be unintended consequences and you could end up with, actually, outcomes that aren’t anticipated. That’s why, yeah, we are happy to support this to go to select committee, and, if it is the will of the next Government, that we continue with this member’s bill if a member can be found—if Dr McLellan survives the election or one of her colleagues wants to pick up the bill, then we’ll consider that through the select committee process—

💬 Arena Williams: She’s a survivor.

—which is a robust process—

💬 Arena Williams: He thinks she’s getting a promotion.

—and we’ll have the opportunity to do that. Now—

💬 Camilla Belich: She might be a Minister.

Thank you very much for those comments. So here we are. Of course, the most important thing when it comes to KiwiSaver contributions is, of course, the more people earn, the higher their incomes, the higher the KiwiSaver contributions can be. So, fundamentally, we’re a Government—well, we’re a party and hoping to be a Government that will focus on growing those New Zealand incomes so that we can not only enjoy a higher standard of living today but can also salt away some savings for later so that we can have a more comfortable retirement. That ultimately rests on an effective growth plan.

We haven’t heard too much about an economic growth plan from Mr Robertson and from members opposite, but the foundations of that haven’t really changed. It’s about having an environment that is encouraging of investment because, ultimately, how do you grow the economy—how do you grow the economy? You have to find some people who are prepared to invest their money to start a new business, to grow a business, to take on the world, to start exporting—all those things rely on investment. So you need a climate that’s encouraging of investment. You need good quality infrastructure. You need decent skills that people can draw on. You also need to keep taxes low—and we’ve heard a lot about taxes today. We’re a country that wants to keep those taxes as low as possible.

But perhaps I might be trespassing on the good will of the Speaker by going too far away from this particular bill—other than to say that we thank the member Dr McLellan for bringing this bill before us. We’re happy to take it to select committee and have a look, and we’ll see how it progresses in the next Government.

This will be the final members’ day for the year, and it is worth taking a moment to reflect on the many contributions of members. I’ve been a member of Parliament for 12 years. I’ve had a bill in every ballot and I’ve only had one drawn. I’d just like to state on the record that there’s something wrong with that ballot system. I want to see the odds—I want to see the odds—because it doesn’t seem right to me that there are some members that get a whole heap. And I’m thinking of—well, I won’t name names, but there’s some members that have been a lot luckier than me over the course of the 12 years and I just want to put that on the record. But I’ll leave it at that.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m pleased to take a call on the Employment Relations (Protection for Kiwisaver Members) Amendment Bill.

I too have had the thrill of having a bill come out of that biscuit tin, so I absolutely congratulate Dr Tracey McLellan for having had her bill drawn. It’s a really wonderful experience for a backbencher to be able to bring something through to the Parliament which is often their “why”; it is often something that’s really important to them personally. I’m sorry that she’s not here today to be able to go through this particular experience, but I look forward to her future contributions with regard to this bill.

I’d also like to thank the National Party for actually supporting this bill, because it’s a significant thing when you look at a bill like this—which is about something so important—and that should probably rise above politics in some ways. It’s so critical that people in this country can save for their retirement. It’s a really big deal and it’s an area where there should be, in my view, way more common ground than there is, because it’s so absolutely critical and it’s a future forward situation.

There are a few things that we can tweak in our worlds which are very significant to people. One is tax settings and the other is employment relations, I think. Those things really, really impact people’s lives in a very fundamental way and empower them. I can see that this bill combines the two, because it looks at the employment relations settings and it tweaks them—and not, I don’t think, in any overbearing way; in a way that will encourage more investment and more investment in an area of people’s lives that will give them greater empowerment and security at a really important time in their lives.

I’ve got to say, I’m one of those wayward people who didn’t have a lot of KiwiSaver. I was working for myself and I had every excuse in the book. I was paying down my mortgage. I had all sorts of reasons why I didn’t quite have to get around to doing anything more than the minimum contribution. Then I went on the Finance and Expenditure Committee, and I got quite a shock at the information that was coming through to me about how low our savings are. And they’re particularly low, of course, for women. So it’s incredibly important that there is as little pressure in an employment situation as possible to opt out of a KiwiSaver arrangement; as much encouragement as possible for employers to let people into those schemes and to see them as a fait accompli. That’s incredibly important to women in this country.

I just want to dwell on that for a minute, because I don’t think a lot of New Zealanders understand just how low the level of saving is in comparison to what they should be saving. I read that the savings for a 40-year-old are $36,000 for an average, but $43,000 for men and $32,000 for women. That’s quite a difference you can see between women and men in that space. That’s going to go out and be much, much worse by the time they get older. Somebody with that level of average savings is going to end up about $400 short of what they need when they reach retirement age. That’s a significant amount. So it’s really, really important New Zealanders save and we encourage them to do so, but it’s also really important we recognise things like gender inequity in this area.

I’m really proud of some other work that has happened on this side of the House which is related to making sure this happens. That is the promise that there’ll be a top-up for women or people on parental leave so that they’re actually bringing up those incomes. Because, as a previous speaker said, just a little difference in saving—a few months, nine months—extrapolates out by the time you reach retirement age. So it’s incredibly important that we recognise the value that women, in particular—

Order! I apologise to the member. Your time has expired.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to take a call on the Employment Relations (Protection for Kiwisaver Members) Amendment Bill, and I hate to disappoint Helen White—and I’m sure it comes as no surprise that ACT opposes this bill. We oppose it because we fundamentally disagree with Government getting so involved in the employer-employee relationship. If we look at the explanatory note of the bill, it says, “The majority of employers in Aotearoa New Zealand do the right thing by their workers, but a small minority will seek to circumvent their responsibilities in order to cut costs.” Small minority—this legislation is just not necessary. It really is another example of a Government that just doesn’t trust employers and business owners, which is really sad and really not justified, and it’s all about control.

The bill would introduce grounds for raising a personal grievance where an employee’s employment has been adversely affected as a result of their membership with a KiwiSaver or complying superannuation fund. The conditions upon which those personal grievances can be taken, just to mention a couple—obviously, you have to belong to a KiwiSaver scheme—the employee’s employer refuses to or omits to offer them the same conditions as other employees, whether it’s a condition of work, money, fringe benefits, or training.

Workers can choose whether they want to work in a particular place if they want. If they don’t want to, they don’t have to. There are other places if the conditions aren’t what they like. That’s what employment contracts are all about. Workers should also be able to use their KiwiSaver how they want, contribute how much or how little they want. KiwiSaver at the moment’s not performing particularly well, and some people may want to use it in different ways—for example, to pay off debt, maybe. If they want to use it to pay off debt, then they should be able to, and that’s pretty basic, really. You pay off debt, eventually save, and then you can invest. That’s the sort of financial advice that should be taught at schools.

The bill also proposes repealing section 101B of the KiwiSaver Act 2006, which entitles employers and employees to agree that an employer’s compulsory contributions do not need to be in addition to ordinary pay. So the Government is actually getting involved in telling an employee what they can and can’t do. It really is unfortunate that the mistrust of employers is so much as to be interfering with the employment contract process.

I listened to a debate before dinner, and any New Zealander who just happened to tune in at the same time, listening to the Labour speakers, they’d wonder what country they were in, because it’s just not the reality of business in New Zealand. Business owners are good, hard-working people. They take the risks. They go through all the stress of employing other New Zealanders, and the extra costs they’ve had to accept, just suck up, over the last six years, we won’t dwell on it today. I think it’s been mentioned enough over the last wee while, and the rolling of the eyes over there is—I’ve had enough of those.

To be constantly vilified by this Government—business owners—is just quite disgusting. Thank goodness it’ll stop on 14 October. Employers and employees can breathe a sigh of relief. ACT opposes this bill.

Well, it might be a distraction, but I want to respond a little bit to Chris Baillie, the member from ACT. If I heard him right, the logic was basically: most people who run businesses are good jokers, therefore it’s some kind of crime by the Government of the day to put in place rules that prevent people rorting the system and discriminating against people who are signed up to KiwiSaver. Is that basically the logic of it? So I urge anyone who’s listening tonight to consider that that philosophy, that mind-set, will permeate a National-ACT Government were it to be elected in October. The country would be the worse off for it. Because that is the kind of mind-set that we heard tonight that would actually govern this House, this Parliament, if National and ACT were elected. This country has so much to lose.

I was pleased to hear Paul Goldsmith before, who has clearly softened during the years of a Labour-led Government—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! I would like to hear this speech. Thank you.

Paul Goldsmith has clearly softened his views; being exposed to a very capable, reasonable, and reform-minded Labour Government has meant that at least Paul Goldsmith has come round to the idea that KiwiSaver is something worthwhile for this country. He had the good grace to acknowledge the late Hon Dr Sir Michael Cullen. One of his great legacies during his time in politics was—well, a couple of them that are relevant to this debate—KiwiSaver, but also the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. Paul Goldsmith had the grace to recognise that.

Kudos also, to Dr Tracey McLellan, who is with this bill putting right an unfortunate mistake—to put it charitably—committed by the last National Government in its dying days; an amendment to the KiwiSaver legislation that created two loopholes in the law—the first basically said that employers were not legally obliged to offer employees enrolled in the KiwiSaver scheme the same terms and conditions of employment that they offer to others. Secondly, it basically opened the doors for employers to offset pay increases against KiwiSaver contributions.

Now, the great beauty of KiwiSaver is that it is based on the nudge. It basically creates the conditions to gently change the behaviour of New Zealanders and save more. That’s important for two reasons, actually. First, as a country, for a long, long time, we simply haven’t been saving enough. It’s a structural problem in our economy. We do not have the pools of capital to invest in our own economic development, our own businesses, because we haven’t been saving enough.

Secondly, we have this wonderful treasure that is New Zealand superannuation. The universality of it means that we have some of the lowest rates of senior citizen poverty in the world, but its universality necessitates a certain modesty in the scheme. That means you can live on New Zealand super, particularly if you own your own home, but if you don’t own your own home, it can be pretty tough to survive. Therefore, the power of the idea behind KiwiSaver was that you’re incentivising Kiwis through the nudge to save more for their own retirement, and to live a better life as a result.

The changes that Tracey McLellan is fixing are designed to eliminate the possibility that a small number of unscrupulous employers might exploit these loopholes, effectively discriminate against Kiwis who are enrolled in KiwiSaver, and undermine the incentive, undermine the power of the nudge. That has the effect of undermining KiwiSaver as a whole. It could mean, if it wasn’t for Tracey McLellan’s bill tonight, that KiwiSaver savers would be disadvantaged by those loopholes.

It’s very clear that Labour is the party that New Zealanders can trust with their retirement income. We created KiwiSaver. Look at the enhancements in the 2023 Budget. On the other side of the House, they’re promising to lift the age of entitlement for superannuation to 67, against the advice of the Retirement Commissioner. New Zealanders don’t like that and they won’t trust it.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s with pleasure that I rise again today to speak in support of a member’s bill, this time the Employment Relations (Protection for Kiwisaver Members) Amendment Bill, in the name of Dr Tracey McLellan. Basically, this bill aims to ensure that workers cannot be discriminated against for being part of the KiwiSaver scheme or superannuation fund.

Currently, employers are not legally obliged to offer workers enrolled in KiwiSaver the same terms of employment, salary or wages, conditions of work, fringe benefits, or opportunities for training, promotion, and transfer as a worker not enrolled in the scheme. So the bill aims to restore these protections, which were retracted by the National Government I think under urgency not long after coming into Government in 2008 without any warning to the public. So public beware, leopards tend not to change their spots. It also makes clear that an employee’s wages cannot include the employer’s compulsory contributions to KiwiSaver. These changes, we believe, should provide greater incentive to join KiwiSaver or a similar superannuation scheme and just maintain the intention of the scheme. So we’re fully in support of that. It just seems a small but useful tweak to the scheme.

There’s a sense, we’ve heard from a member from the ACT Party, that all employers are always great, never take advantage of any loopholes or exploit their workers—always, always good and shame on anyone who would suggest otherwise; seeming to miss the, I thought generally acknowledged, imbalance of power between workers and the bosses. I don’t know. It’s a different world, perhaps, that that person is living in. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody here say that all employers are bad employers—I just don’t think that’s been said by anybody. But there is an imbalance of power and there certainly are breaches that we have evidence of that are widespread in terms of across our workplaces.

In fact, in this area, I saw the review of the KiwiSaver scheme evaluation final summary—I can’t remember the date—that noted that 18 percent of employers reported changing their remuneration practices as a result of KiwiSaver. Those who did applied a salary sacrifice. It’s important to note that KiwiSaver can have complicated effects on wage rates which may not have been captured in this research. So I think that’s a bit of an indication that this practice may not just be the very rare occasion that’s been suggested or never happens, as we may have heard.

I do want to speak briefly in the remaining time about some of the points raised around security and old age, which is one of the parts of the points of KiwiSaver and our national superannuation scheme: the point that national superannuation was designed at a time where there was an assumption of homeownership, and that is no longer the reality for an increasing number of New Zealanders. And we do need to come to terms with that as a country. The people who are least likely to be able to own their homes are also the least likely to be able to build up significant amounts within their KiwiSaver. It is an inherent inequity within the KiwiSaver scheme when we are not addressing that in terms of wider workforce policies or adjustments to compensate for those inequities. And the evaluations of KiwiSaver are actually pretty on the line about the benefits of it while it’s widely bought into, but so many people only manage to get a small amount of savings that doesn’t significantly help them at the end of their life, compared to those who are already privileged. So I do believe there is a broader conversation for us as a country to how we address that inequity and ensure a life without poverty in retirement for everyone in this country.

Madam Speaker, thank you. KiwiSaver is the kind of transformative economic change that Labour members can be proud of. Labour in Government makes big change, not only for our economy in addressing a structural problem which exists with our savings rates but also makes a huge difference for the lives of working people—

💬 Simon Watts: Your leadership speeches are going to have to be better than this.

—especially those people, Simon Watts, who are most disadvantaged throughout their working life: women, takatāpui, young people who don’t have access to education. Those are the people who get the best thing out of KiwiSaver which is a dignified retirement—because it is universal. As my colleague the Hon Phil Twyford pointed out—and it is something I want to build on—the structural problem in our economy that the Hon Dr Michael Cullen addressed when he launched KiwiSaver in 2007 was about creating a scheme which employers and workers could buy into and make sure that they had a certainty in investing the savings they needed for their retirement for those times in their lives where they were most vulnerable to economic shocks. That’s in our later lives when we’ve stopped working and our earning potential drops, but it’s also in times like when we buy our first home and we’re most vulnerable to changes in interest rates because our mortgages are the biggest—like me at the moment. It’s something which helps people through those tough times, those shocks, and it creates household resiliency. In our economy that’s really important because we need resiliency, not only at a household level but also at a community level and for our wider economy in this country.

The changes in this bill reverse violence to the KiwiSaver scheme, which was so transformational and was so important in 2007, where the National Government, as Jan Logie points out, under urgency, made several changes to KiwiSaver as part of its wider package of personal tax cuts. They called this total remuneration package approach as something which would allow employers to essentially offset pay rises against KiwiSaver contributions. It did violence to the KiwiSaver scheme because KiwiSaver was never about making up people’s total remuneration. It was about solving this big economic problem that we as New Zealanders faced in that our national savings rates are low.

If I can come back to that point, our national savings rates have grown somewhat in the last decades, but that growth has been disguised by what is essentially growth of the savings of the top 1 percent of wealthy households in this country. And it’s a trend that we see globally. That is offsetting a declining household savings rate of the lowest 90 percent—so all of us earners—in household savings rates. What that means is that we get this inequality of savings which creates, over our entire economy, a problem of structural inequality. We see a growth in the kind of investments which are conservative and managed through funds and banks, and households don’t actually have the kinds of savings which get them through those economic shocks. So ordinary people on the ground are exposed to those shocks and experience them in really significant ways where those with savings don’t have that.

This addresses that. Those changes, which were made by the National Government in 2008, undermine that economic problem which the Hon Dr Michael Cullen solved with KiwiSaver. That’s why this bill is really good, because it shores up those savings and it ensures that KiwiSaver is protected for everyone into the future. Alongside the super fund those are two things which mean that all New Zealanders can look at Labour and say, “These guys have a track record of protecting our retirement, of making sure that we, in our older age, are not only able to live on this universal income but that we are secure, that we feel safe in our future.” And that’s something that I want for all kuia and kaumātua in my electorate of Manurewa.

Since Labour established KiwiSaver in July 2007, New Zealanders have saved tens of billions of dollars into those retirement savings, and that’s important for all of us. A really positive change, in the last 50 seconds that I have, that I want to talk about in this Budget 2023, is the change for women’s KiwiSaver, because on average women have lower KiwiSaver balances and retirement income than men, with parenting and the time off from the workplace representing one of the main reasons for that. The way that this Government has responded to that is we have made sure that the Government contributions continue to go into women’s savings accounts during those parenting years. It will make a huge difference for women’s retirement savings. Toby Moore, one of the best people in this building, he worked on that. It’s due to that kind of work and the work of many people in this building, not only MPs in this House but also the staff who make sure that this kind of revolutionary policy changes our economy for the better and makes it work for everyone. That’s why I’m proud to support this member’s bill, the Employment Relations (Protection for Kiwisaver Members) Amendment Bill and all of the work that Labour does on KiwiSaver.

Madam Speaker, it’s my pleasure to take a call on the first reading of the Employment Relations (Protection for Kiwisaver Members) Amendment Bill.

I also want to, like other members in the House tonight, congratulate the hard-working member for the Banks Peninsula electorate, Dr Tracey McLellan, for getting her member’s bill drawn from the ballot. You know, that’s a quite an achievement, because some members have had relatively, you know, shorter careers and they’ve had bills drawn on a regular basis. I’ve not yet have that privilege to date, and, interestingly, the former Speaker, the Rt Hon Trevor Mallard, had a long career and never actually got a member’s bill drawn from the ballot. So when one is drawn, it’s particularly special. It’s a special moment.

The member for Banks Peninsula has addressed an important issue with her member’s bill, because it seeks to restore protections afforded to KiwiSaver members by the Employment Relations Act 2000, before it was amended by the Employment Relations Amendment Act 2008. It aims to ensure that workers cannot be discriminated against because they are members of a KiwiSaver scheme or complying superannuation fund.

As it stands, employers are not legally obliged to offer workers enrolled in KiwiSaver the same terms of employment, salary, wages, or conditions of work, or those fringe benefits, or even opportunities for training, promotion or transfer. And as a worker, if they’re not enrolled in that scheme, they could be at a disadvantage. Employers are also permitted to offset pay increases against workers’ KiwiSaver contributions and these legislative loopholes have the potential to significantly disadvantage New Zealanders saving for their retirement. This amending bill will restore the protections provided by the principal Act before it was amended in 2008 and ensure that most workers cannot be discriminated against simply because they are members of a KiwiSaver scheme or a complying superannuation fund.

This bill fits in with our wider plan for financial security of Kiwis. KiwiSaver was the key policy of the 2007 Labour-led Government that radically boosts the prosperity of Kiwis in their retirement, and it’s also supported by their employers and the Government. It also builds resilience so Kiwis don’t have all their eggs in the one basket.

I serve on the Finance and Expenditure Committee. We recently had the Reserve Bank Governor before the committee to discuss the Monetary Policy Statement. We were discussing the housing market and the governor touched on KiwiSaver adding to the resilience of the New Zealand economy. Since the establishment of KiwiSaver, our population is becoming less reliant on equity in the home as our key investment, with us moving to a broader, more diversified investment portfolio through KiwiSaver investments. This has allowed people to diversify and it should be absolutely encouraged. The last thing we want is for people to be discouraged from starting KiwiSaver with their employer because there is a possible disadvantage there. This would heavily affect their financial position in their later years, as has been mentioned by members on the side of the House. This House needs to do all it can to encourage KiwiSaver uptake and this bill does that.

Just to provide more context to this bill, there have been some real positive changes to KiwiSaver in Budget 2023, our Wellbeing Budget. On average, women have lower KiwiSaver balances and retirement income than men, with parenting representing one of the main reasons. The widest gap between men and women is among those in their 40s and 50s. Women in their 40s have about $10,000 or 30 percent less in their account than men, while women in their 50s are down by about $13,000 or 32 percent. So this is a gap that we have taken measures to close. In Budget 2023 the Government is enhancing the KiwiSaver scheme for parents, so when they do take parental leave, then their KiwiSaver contributions are covered. This recognises the unpaid nature of childcare.

This bill goes towards enhancing that financial security for people, so I commend it to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I’m not going to spend too long on the Employment Relations (Protection for Kiwisaver Members) Amendment Bill, because National is supporting this bill. It was interesting listening to the members on the other side; they’re not necessarily full of compliments in the dying hours of their Government. But I don’t blame them; I’d be pretty upset as well if I knew that I had to look for a new job in 49 days. But that is the reality, and that’s probably why they’re a little bit upset on the other side of the House.

💬 Hon David Parker: Your job’s not going to change.

Welcome back. It’s good to hear those voices back, isn’t it? Look, National fully supports the KiwiSaver scheme. We’re obviously supportive of this bill, which is going to provide additional protections in play in order to support those people who are most vulnerable. That makes sense, and that is sensible. KiwiSaver, obviously, is supplementary to the universal superannuation that is offered in this country, and it is something that enjoys considerable buy-in and has been successful, and continues to be successful in this country. So, on that basis, I will commend this bill to the House.

Madam Speaker, I’d like to just pick up on some comments made by my colleague, the Hon Phil Twyford, about the contribution from ACT and the member Chris Baillie, because I think it’s a really interesting insight to the way ACT thinks about our institutions and protections and the kind of libertarian—and I would say Trumpian—politics being offered by that party.

So the logic said that most employers are—as the Hon Phil Twyford said—good people, I think, or good blokes and therefore there was no reason to afford them these protections. And that really worries me because if we take the logic further, what that means is that in any situation where most people are good but there is a human rights issue, it is better not to legislate. Now, I can think of, for example, the fact that most taxi drivers would never dream of harming a passenger in their taxi, so let’s not have protection for taxi passengers. Let’s not have protection for schoolchildren, because most people in whose care they are will look after them. We can take it on and on and on. My point is really that it is a very dangerous libertarian view to suggest that because most people observe the law and follow good behaviour, that somehow absolves us as a society of affording protection for those small and finite instances where there are human rights abuses and breaches, and that really worries me. This bill, the Employment Relations (Protection for Kiwisaver Members) Amendment Bill is an example of legislation that does close that loophole.

My second issue is that it’s great the National Party is supporting this legislation, but to hear the Hon Sir Michael Cullen called “rapacious” is really interesting and affronting, especially for, I’m sure, the people from my electorate in Taieri. And those were the words of the Hon Paul Goldsmith about Sir Michael Cullen, who is commonly referred to as one of the greatest finance Ministers that we have had in this country, followed, of course, by the Hon Grant Robertson. Sir Michael Cullen is from what was the St Kilda electorate, then the Dunedin South electorate, now the Taieri electorate. He is revered in our electorate. He is far from rapacious. He is somebody who recognised that, as New Zealanders, there is a big public benefit in ensuring that we all do well together, that when we—

💬 Hon David Parker: It works well in Australia.

Exactly, it works well in Australia said the Hon David Parker. And when we make sure that we have the means and that our seniors have the means to support themselves, that is a public benefit that takes an additional burden off society. It is something worth doing, that’s why we have universal superannuation, also the brainchild of Sir Michael Cullen, and that is why we have KiwiSaver.

The third point is that while this is about workers’ rights and protecting and affording them to those who might otherwise be discriminated against, as somebody who chairs the Finance and Expenditure Committee, I’m always mindful of the stability of the system. And this is really important, that the system has integrity, and without these protections—and there are 3 million members of this KiwiSaver system—we simply can’t ensure that it will be stable because it is vulnerable, it isn’t complete and whole, it lacks integrity. This closes a gap. The integrity was there to start with and, as other members have said, it was the National Party who, under urgency, removed those protections. It also sends a signal, as has been mentioned by other members, that KiwiSaver is worth investing in, and that’s really important to get trust in the system from those who contribute to it.

I would just ask those listening to this debate to think about the direction of travel because this great member’s bill by my colleague Dr Tracey McLellan is really about the direction of travel and it’s about worker protections. And look what our Government has done. We are the ones who believe in fair pay for hard work. We have boosted the minimum wage to $22.70 per hour; we have worked really hard to address the inequities in the female-dominated sectors, it’s something I’m really proud of, around equal pay. We are addressing pay gaps in health and education—they are two of the biggest sectors, 60 percent of the workforce in the Taieri electorate, as Sir Michael Cullen so aptly reminded me when we were doing street corner meetings together just three years ago. And I remember that very fondly as he came out to support. And for that reason, I hope that people watching see the benefit of this. It’s a great bill, I commend it.

I call Rachel Boyack—five minutes in reply.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, it is a pleasure to take a call in reply on behalf of my outstanding colleague and the sponsor of this bill—the Employment Relations (Protection for Kiwisaver Members) Amendment Bill—Dr Tracey McLellan.

Can I begin in my reply by thanking the immediate speaker just prior to me, Ingrid Leary, for the comments she has made about Sir Michael Cullen. Look, on this side of the House, we are incredibly proud of the contribution made by our finance Ministers towards superannuation for Kiwis. On this side of the House, we had Sir Michael Cullen. On that side of the House, we had Muldoon, and we could go back to look at all of the mistakes that the National Party made around superannuation and what could have been. I am so proud to be a member in a Labour Party following on from the outstanding work that Sir Michael Cullen brought to this Parliament.

I’m going to just touch on some comments made by Paul Goldsmith in his contribution. He talked about the need to encourage investment and that we need to bring more capital into this country. Well, that’s correct. That’s why Labour put in place KiwiSaver in the first place: not only to encourage people to save for their retirement but—as my colleague Arena Williams mentioned—to ensure we were actually correcting a massive imbalance in capital markets in New Zealand.

But yet, the National Party today have put forward policy that will encourage and push property speculation again, and will drive investment away from mechanisms like KiwiSaver that help us to build a pool of capital to invest in a productive sector. They’ve announced they want to make it easier for property speculators to invest in non-productive housing and continue to push prices up and bid up against first-home buyers. So it was quite a bizarre speech to listen to from Paul Goldsmith tonight, where he essentially was trying to argue something that’s completely contrary to policy that National—I note they’ve gone quite quiet now—have introduced today.

A number of speakers tonight have mentioned the importance of good superannuation policy for women, and I was disappointed to hear the interjections from Simon Watts, who was saying, what have we done about this? Well, there is a lot we have done about this. Just recently, in this Budget, we’ve introduced the requirement for those on paid parental leave to continue receiving their KiwiSaver contributions. Because we know that during that time, particularly women who take long periods of paid parental leave, they miss out on those contributions. That has outcomes far reaching beyond that time because of things like compounding interest. So we know that it’s not just what you miss out on during that time, it’s the interest that you collect on it that is lost to you.

The other thing we’ve done, of course, is actually put in place proper pay equity legislation so that women in the first place aren’t actually earning less than they should be—because that is a fundamental component of superannuation; of KiwiSaver: that 3 percent has to be 3 percent of a decent wage. Very proud of our work on the side of the House to both lift the minimum wage, lift wages generally, and particularly to deliver better wage increases for women.

I must finish by responding to some of the comments from the ACT Party tonight, and can I just encourage anyone listening to the debate tonight to please not take into consideration the irresponsible advice that was given by the member from the ACT Party, Chris Baillie. I think it’s always very important that members of Parliament don’t give financial advice, because that financial advice was, quite frankly, appalling. I just want to note that many people would say actually, as well as paying down debt, you should also be investing in your retirement. Those are things that you should be doing at the same time, so I just want to encourage people to take some proper advice rather than listening to that member.

But also that member seemed to fundamentally misunderstand an important component of the Employment Relations Act that is so important for this bill, which is that there is an inherent power imbalance between employer and employee. There is plenty of law in New Zealand that does legislate around the employer-employee relationship, and it’s actually quite frightening to hear an ACT member tonight essentially state they’re going to get rid of all of that if they were to become Government. I think every worker and every union member should be paying attention to that member’s contribution tonight. This is an excellent bill, and I commend it to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

The question is,

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Finance and Expenditure Committee.