Surtax on super. unfair, says poll

Press, 14 March 1987, Page 1

Surtax on super. unfair, says poll

PA Wellington A significant number of people regard surtax on national superannuation as unfair, according to a Social Welfare Departmentcommissioned Heylen poll released yesterday.

While most people believed there was a need to reduce the cost of national superannuation, they considered the present rates for people with no other income to be only "just enough” at best.

The survey found views on superannuation were inconsistent and unlikely to remain static.

“Negative reactions to the surtax, for example, are based more on the ‘principle’ than on the specifics involved,” it said.

"While this study has provided some gauge of current thinking, further public debate and education will possibly result in significant changes in attitude.”

The Minister of Social Welfare, Mrs Hercus, said that the poll was commissioned to discover whether a bipartisan approach to national superannuation policy was possible.

She said the poll showed “widespread community support for the surcharge,” along with majority support for targeting payments based on either income or work

tests. Mrs Hercus later told NZPA that the poll, which cost $56,000, was paid for by the department within the original budget of the task force on income maintenance. She said she instigated the poll because the Government and the Opposition had expressed a desire to search for the possibility of a bipartisan approach over national superannuation. She was not aware of any other polling on national superannuation initiated from within the Government, but there had been polls in the past for special projects. “For example, when the Government launched Family Care,” she said. “Part of it involved a poll via a market research organisation of the level of understanding of the programme.” The latest poll found very low support for maintaining the present national superannuation system at the expense of increased taxation.

“Over all it can be concluded that the public generally acknowledge the need to alter the basis

of national superannuation, but there is no clear consensus on how it should be changed, with differences in opinion tending to reflect personal circumstances rather than political affiliations,” the report said. The Opposition’s spokesman on social welfare, Mr Venn Young, said the Government was clutching at straws in a desperate bid to try to justify its “iniquitous surcharge” on national superannuation. "It is a measure of Mrs Hercus’s deep nervousness about Labour’s broken promise on taxing superannuation that she has spent thousands of dollars of taxpayers’ money on a Heylen poll.”