by Rob Hosking
Superannuation implicitly demands a long-term view on the part of the beholder. That is a problem for those involved in the political process. The 19th century British politician Joseph Chamberlain once observed that any more than a two-week horizon in politics was pointless. One hundred years later British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, perhaps revealing the faster pace of life in the 20th century, famously claimed that "a week is a long time in politics."
But superannuation requires that the short-term-ism be set aside. And it is worth remembering that, on a human level, if you ask any individual to take a long-term view of an issue, say 25 years or more, the answer will generally be very revealing about that individual. It will usually provide a good insight into their inner values, not to mention their inner conflicts.
The same approach can be applied to political parties. How they answer the superannuation conundrum can be extremely revealing, often unintentionally so. I would go so far as to formulate a rule that how a political party answers the superannuation question tells more about that party than how it answers practically any other question.
Therefore superannuation can be used as a sort of litmus test for a political party’s approach to politics. Last month we looked at Act (
Act at sixes and sevens) and how the party’s tensions between its purists and populists had coloured its approach.How revealing then are the other parties approach super? Very, even if sometimes what is revealed is not pretty.
Alliance party
Superannuation provides ample evidence that the party, once formed with the aim of replacing Labour as the main force on the political left, has been subsumed by the older party. Prior to the 1999 election, and indeed for some months afterwards, leader Jim Anderton insisted that there was nothing wrong with the current superannuation structure, once the benefit levels were restored to pre-1998 levels.
These days he may not defend the pre-funded scheme with the same vigour as its progenitor, Finance Minister Michael Cullen, but he can still be relied upon to give a pretty robust exposition of its virtues. Indeed, at the time the government's superannuation policy was launched in October 2000, Anderton was, if anything, more blood-curdlingly alarmist about the prospects under the current system than was the Minister of Finance.
"Economic growth alone cannot address the increase in costs," he said. In short, the Alliance has over superannuation, as it has in many other areas, subsumed its own views to those of Labour.
The party hasn’t done too badly out of this. Its policy swag includes paid parental leave, regional development, and the Kiwibank. Not bad for a party which only got 7% of the vote at the last election - something the dissidents within the party might do well to remember.
New Zealand First
Leader Winston Peters has pursued a deliberate strategy of keeping out of the public eye for the first half of the current parliamentary term. That period is now well and truly over, and we are seeing signs of his re-birth. Superannuation is one area it is being vocal on.
NZ First is inherently a paternalist party. Since the ‘tight five’ and their associates split off in 1998 the party has remained the last refuge of the Muldoonist ‘Rob’s Mob’.
Partly this is Peters remaining loyal to his constituency of retirees in his Tauranga electorate. But there’s also a deeper issue: Peters has made a career posing as the only principled man in a collection of shysters, and superannuation, an issue upon which almost every party has transgressed at some point, is a good issue for him to wax righteously wrathful about.
The party’s paternalist approach also comes through in its advocacy of including individualised accounts in the pre-funded scheme. This is close enough to the scheme that was overwhelmingly rejected by voters in the 1997 referendum on the issue for him to be able to cling to his much-cherished consistency.
The Greens
The Greens support the government – kind of – but don’t support it on one of its key planks, superannuation.
The party voted for the Budget even though it had the superannuation vote within it, and the Greens don’t like that. But rather than vote against the New Zealand Superannuation Bill itself, the party abstained.
It likes universal entitlements, but it does not like the idea of the money being invested in overseas stock markets, a position oddly similar to that of National.
The party’s biggest inner tension at the moment though is not one that National is ever likely to have.
The Greens sort of want to be part of government, and sort of don’t. Co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons recently made a major speech which appeared to say the Greens would be a lot less accommodating to the government in the coming year, but then pulled away from taking a particularly hard line.
The party as a whole is going to find the "half in, half out" line increasingly difficult to follow in the next 12 months.
Part Two of this series will be published on January 17.
Rob Hosking is a Wellington-based freelance writer specialising in political, economic and IT related issues.
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