Professor Robert MacCulloch and Sir Roger Douglas: The Superannuation Debate

PRESS RELEASE

Professor Robert MacCulloch
Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics
University of Auckland

Sir Roger Douglas
NZ Finance Minister 1984-88

The NZ Initiative, which is funded by our largest corporates, has attacked super savings for all. One of its former staffers is Prime Minister Luxon's Chief Policy Adviser.

Its Chair argues NZ received economic benefits from Rob Muldoon killing our fledgling compulsory savings scheme as PM in 1976. The Initiative and its Business Roundtable forerunner have for the past 40 years deliberately promoted Muldoon's unfunded Pay-As-You-Go pyramid-style retirement scheme, causing a national disaster.

What have been the costs? Half of all Kiwis retire with almost no financial savings. The typical Australian retires with half a million dollars. We now stand divided. One half is sorted with ample savings; the other half with nothing. Inequality has shot up. The worst is yet to come. An unreported $2 trillion debt mountain has been dumped on our children's shoulders. It must be paid by them. Had a private firm hidden this liability like our government, then those responsible would've gone to prison. Why not politicians and their close advisors?

What does the NZ Initiative and its political allies stand for? Making people dependent on the State by opposing them having their own million dollars worth of savings, funded by tax cuts? Today's youth, under Initiative-promoted policies, are being forced to pay for their parents and grandparents' retirement. Choice has been denied them. The only way they can escape is to leave NZ.

Professor Robert MacCulloch holds the Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics at Auckland University. He has previously worked at the Reserve Bank, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics. He runs the blog Down to Earth Kiwi.

Sir Roger Douglas is a retired New Zealand politician, economist and accountant who served as a minister in two Labour governments.