Tuesday 17th of October 2000

Ian H Douglas 51 Liverpool Street Wanganui tel 06 347 1933 email dougie@xtra.co.nz I am pleased to see that we now have some concrete proposals form the Government on a sustainable superannuation. In 1899 in the UK parliament they were again discussing old age pensions, as they had been doing for the past 130 years. Then they were also wondering how they would pay for it. Subsequently they paid for two world wars, a major recession. They still do not have as good a basic superannuation as we now have in NZ. Our history is much the same. We introduced old age pensions in 1898 and we have paid them on a gradually improving basis for the past 100 years. We should now go forward with faith in our future and in our ability to make things work in the long run. All parties should get in behind this proposal which is, at least, structured on a sensible basis. We should stay with a universal pension with bulk funding and not go down the Australian road of individual accounts. These are expensive to operate and produce no better result for the bulk of our retirees - our women. According to my research the Government had an operating balance of $11.7 billion over the five years from 1995 to 2000. this indicates that the proposals are based on some reasonable assumptions. Once we get the fund established we can look again at my proposals to dedicate GST (currently around 8 percent of GDP) to meet our ongoing commitment to a reasonable basic universal flat rate superannuation. I look forward to the debate on your superannuation web site. Ian H Douglas