Tagged tax for super. ‘potentially misleading’

Press, 2 August 1989, Page 8

Tagged tax for super. ‘potentially misleading’

Political reporter

The Government's tagged tax for superannuation had the potential to be seriously misleading, the Opposition spokeswoman on finance, Miss Ruth Richardson, told a business audience in Wellington yesterday. “It may lead people to believe that in paying the tax they are providing for their own retirement. “Of course, they would be doing no such thing,” she said. "There is no certainty whatsoever about the amount of retirement income the Government will be providing next century.”

Miss Richardson criticised the Government’s figures for the amount of tax which would be required to fund the Guaranteed Retirement Income.

While they showed little change

from the 7.5 c in the dollar rate announced in the Budget, they stopped at the year 2020. This was before the biggest increase occurred in the ratio of dependent elderly people to the general population.

Miss Richardson also attacked the Budget for setting a target for unemployment of less than 100,000 by the end of 1992. “That is a shockingly high target to be setting,” she said. “An unemployment level of 100,000 — or anywhere near it — is totally unacceptable. “Labour clearly has a conscience about unemployment but no commitment to the labour market reforms that can make all the difference.

“Parliamentary Labqur is still

hostage to industrial labour.” The compact with the trade unions was no more than “sordid dealing making with unelected and unaccountable trade unionists of the ilk of Pat Kelly and Ken Douglas.” In a speech to the Post Office Union annual conference in Wellington yesterday, the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, rejected further labour market deregulation by the Government.

“We are just not interested in any deregulation whose only possible outcome is the removal of protection for workers and the payment of lower wages,” he said. “I have not disguised my irritation at calls for totally free labour markets by people whose own position is protected by massive salary and superannuation packages.”