National discounts joint super, policy

Press, 26 August 1986, Page 2

National discounts joint super, policy

By

MARTIN FREETH

in Wellington

National superannuation will remain a highly political issue in spite of a suggestion yesterday by the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, that Labour and National should take a bipartisan approach to changes in the scheme. Mr Lange raised the issue with reporters on the eve of the Opposition’s announcing today its new policy on superannuation, likely to include removal of the tax surcharge imposed by the Government last year and a gradual lifting of the age of entitlement from 60 to 65.

Mr Lange said wide support existed for lifting superannuation “above politics” and said he was prepared to look at a policy shared with National.

Mr Lange suggested that a willingness by National, the party responsible for the present scheme, to make now a policy change and to acknowledge demographic changes in the future would assist any bipartisan approach. However, the Opposition dismissed the idea, except to suggest the Government would be free to adopt National’s new superannuation policy. The Opposition’s spokesman on social welfare, Mr Venn Young, questioned where the

Government’s interest in biprtisanship had been two weeks ago when it dumped his private member’s bill to repeal the tax surcharge before it even got to a Parliamentary select committee.

Mr Young also referred back to the Government’s tax surcharge as a breach of its 1984 election promise.

“You can’t have a bipartisan approach to a sensitive policy like national superannuation with a party which breaks its word.” The rift between the parties goes deeper than posturing. Mr Young dismissed the significance, emphasised by the Government, of the scheme’s cost in future, especially after the year 2000, when the proportion of retired people to the workforce will rise.

“Anything is sustainable provided you have the political will to give it support,” he said.

His concern was attaining a scheme widely perceived as fair and simple, and not about to be changed frequently. Mr Young favoured a bipartisan approach to the extent that it could provide a scheme people could be assured would not change with each election.

National policy had been drafted in the last 12 months by a caucus com-

mittee representing all philosophical strands in the party. Mr Young said it represented the “best possible consensus” between those who favoured retaining the present scheme and those who wanted people to rely solely on private provision for old age. The policy would retain the "universal” principle, ensuring that everybody at a certain age would receive superannuation, although the age was likely to be moved back. Mr Young said taxing superannuation was a sufficient means of ensuring a bigger payout to those most in need.

The Government is not expected to bring out its new policy on superannuation until after the Royal Commission on social policy, which will not report until June, 1988.

Mr Lange this year forestalled debate on the issue within the Government by passing on to the commission detailed proposals for change prepared by a caucus committee without consideration of them by the Cabinet or its committees. The caucus committee’s chairman, Ms Annette King, first floated the idea of a bipartisan approach to superannuation when opening Parliament’s Ad-dress-in-Reply debate in March.