Press statement

Grey Power has offered the new Prime Minister, Bill English, some sound advice; don’t mess with national superannuation.

National president of the Grey Power Federation Tom O’Connor said there had been a clear understanding with retiring Prime Minster John Key that national superannuation was safe while he was in office. However the new Prime Minster has hinted that he will not be held by John Key’s solemn promise. That raises the possibility that the pension scheme will be a major election issue next year,” he said.

“National superannuation has been under almost constant attack by all sorts of people and groups for the past year or more. Some say it is unaffordable and others want the age of entitlement raised from 65 to 67.”

O’Connor said the scheme cost something less than four percent of GDP and Government had not made any contribution to the fund since 2008. He said the scheme was clearly affordable now and would be more so if Government honoured their part of the bargain and resumed contributions.

It would be unthinkable to raise the entitlement age to 67, particularly for those involved in physically demanding trades, he said.

O’Connor admitted there were parts of the scheme which need a review and some tidying up but the basic entitlements of a universal pension for all New Zealanders at 65 was out of bounds. The deduction system for people with foreign state funded pensions who applied for New Zealand superannuation, after ten years residency, was generous and basically sound but there were a few anomalies which needed to be addressed, he said.

“We have a firm policy to retain a state-funded, universal, non-means tested pension payable at age 65 years and that is our bottom line. If politicians want to use superannuation as a political football they need to remember that we can field a formidable team and there could be free kicks and penalties aplenty.”

It was a proposal to apply surtax to national superannuation which gave rise to Grey Power more than 30 years ago and O’Connor said his national membership of between 65,000 and 70,000 would not tolerate another attempt to dilute what was already a meagre pension.

“We would rather not get into a fight with Government as we achieve much more by working with them on many important issues but there are limits to what we will tolerate.”

We hope the new Prime Minster will discuss any proposed changes to the system with us before finalising policies, he said.

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