On the face of it, National’s new policy of allowing people to withdraw up to $20,000 from their Kiwisaver accounts to put towards a new busines venture looks attractive, especially as the daunting task of recovery from the economic ravages caused by Covid19 gets underway. If it works, it could certainly encourage more business investment, increase activity and jobs, and aid the process of recovery.

But as many analysts have pointed out it is also extremely risky, given the high rate of new business start-ups that fail, even at the best of times, and could see people losing substantial amounts of their Kiwisaver investments, to their personal longer-term detriment. Judith Collins’ counter that people should have a choice whether to invest their Kiwisaver funds with a funds manager, or in a new business venture has some merit, but misses the fundamental point of Kiwisaver.

What she describes as money “put aside for a rainy day” is far more than that. Kiwisaver is a savings scheme for a person’s retirement, both to reduce their long-term reliance on New Zealand Superannuation and to enable them to enjoy a decent standard of living as they grow older. The idea was that everyone joining Kiwisaver had the equivalent of a dedicated fund where their investments were locked away until they reached 65.

An early concession was made to allow first home buyers to withdraw a small proportion of their Kiwisaver investment to go towards the cost of a deposit on a house. However, successive Labour- and National-led governments have properly resisted many other calls for people to be able to access their Kiwisaver funds early, for matters such as student loans repayments or unexpected health costs. In so doing, they have recognised the long-term nature of Kiwisaver investments, so that individuals get to enjoy the benefit of a substantial retirement lump-sum pay-out at the age of 65.

Retirement income policy has been a vexed issue since the fourth Labour Government introduced a 25% tax surcharge on superannuitants’ additional income above $5,200 a year in 1984. From that time, and through most of the 1990s, superannuation policy was a political football kicked back and forward between the Labour and National parties. Both wanted a viable long-term solution to the rising costs of New Zealand Superannuation as the population lived longer, while, at the same time, not incurring the wrath of older voters in the process.

Eventually, in 2000 Sir Michael Cullen established the Superannuation Fund (popularly known as the Cullen Fund) to pre-fund a portion of likely future superannuation costs by setting aside a fixed sum each year for the Fund to invest and build up. That established a measure of stability in superannuation policy and brought the government time in terms of rising future costs of New Zealand Superannuation due to an ageing population. The establishment of Kiwisaver by Sir Michael in 2007 as a voluntary retirement savings scheme was the next step in making the long-term costs of looking after older New Zealanders more sustainable.

However, the new equilibrium was short-lived. In response to the Global Financial Crisis in 2009 Sir John Key’s National-led government suspended the annual contributions to the Superannuation Fund and did not resume them during its entire term of office. Meanwhile, projected long-term superannuation costs were continuing to rise, leading Labour in Opposition in 2014 to propose gradually lifting the New Zealand Superannuation entitlement age from 65 to 67. Yet when the National-led government introduced legislation in 2017 to increase the age to 67 over a 20- year period, the Labour Party opposed it. It was reminiscent of the superannuation game-playing of the 1980s and 1990s all over again.

Today, the current Labour-led government’s position is that the age of entitlement will not be shifted above 65 years, and that the issue is only being discussed because National cut contributions to the Superannuation Fund back in 2009. National, on the other hand, remains committed to its 2017 position of raising the age to 67 over 20 years. The upshot is that no-one under about 45 years of age can plan their futures with certainty.

It is generally accepted that the advent of Covid19 has led to dramatic changes in the way governments the world over will need to respond to the new economic and social challenges now facing their countries. A new sense of innovation and flexibility will be required. Doing things the way they always have been done is not likely to work anymore.

However, no matter what new dynamics Covid19 imposes, some things will not change. Meeting the rising costs of superannuation will be one of them because populations will continue to age. This is hardly the time to be further weakening the mechanisms, like Kiwisaver, already in place to help people save for their retirement. If anything, the incentives need to be increased, and Kiwisaver made a compulsory savings scheme for everyone entering the workforce, so that they can plan their futures with certainty throughout their working careers, regardless of the external uncertainties. Kiwisaver is a critical part of that process and is most certainly not just a piggy bank to be raided on “a rainy day” as National is now proposing.   

The 52^nd Parliament is hurtling towards an inglorious end. It will finish in just over two weeks and will be dissolved shortly thereafter on August 12 in preparation for the September 19 general election. It has been a dramatic term – dominated by huge tragedies, from the Christchurch Mosques massacres, to the Whakaari White Island eruption, and now Covid19.

But in recent weeks the focus has been more on what many would describe as farce. The revelations concerning the personal conduct lapses of a number of MPs that led them to stand down have raised many questions about the culture of Parliament, the stresses placed upon MPs, and the responsibility of political parties. But while inappropriate and unprofessional conduct by MPs should never be condoned, no matter their status, the current situation needs to be kept in perspective.

The present number of 20 MPs (at last count) standing down at this election is not out of line with the numbers retiring at previous elections. Historically, New Zealand has had a relatively frequent turnover of MPs – the average length of service is just over six years. Of the MPs elected at the 2014 election, 53 have now either retired or been defeated. Only 26 of the MPs elected at the 2011 election are seeking re-election this year.

So, the turnover of MPs is not the problem – indeed, many would argue that a frequent turnover and refreshing of the House is no bad thing. Others argue for term limits to stop MPs serving for too long, although just as many are surprised to learn that very few MPs serve for more than ten to fifteen years, let alone longer.

Also, the average age of MPs has been dropping over the years, meaning that, consistent with patterns in the wider workforce, MPs are more likely to move on to do other things, as part of a range of career experiences. If anything, the turnover rate for MPs is therefore likely to increase in the years ahead.

But the unusual thing about this year’s crop of Parliamentary departures is the number where the decision to stand aside has been brought about by circumstances relating to personal conduct. During this term, National has been rocked by the scandals involving Jami-Lee Ross (now running as an independent and unlikely to succeed); Hamish Walker and Andrew Falloon. But the problem is not solely related to National. Labour has lost two Ministers for personal conduct lapses: Meka Whaitiri following an altercation with a staff member (although she is seeking re-election as an MP) and now Iain Lees-Galloway, as well as others for incompetence.

Most of the cases have been clear-cut, but there are some aspects of the Lees-Galloway case that are curious. He had been a controversial Immigration Minister, and there had previously been calls for his resignation, especially in the wake of his decision to grant residency to the convicted Czech drug smuggler Karel Sroubek, who had a lengthy criminal record in both the Czech Republic and New Zealand. Had the Prime Minister dismissed him at the time of that incident, there would have been little argument, given the lapse of judgement involved and his admission that he had not read the full file before making his decision.

Yet she did not, and instead backed him strongly. All of which makes the decision to get rid of him now because of a consensual affair with a staff member that ended some time ago and was apparently widely known a little puzzling. It leaves unanswered questions about whether, for example, he used his Ministerial position to the advantage of the staff member. The Prime Minister’s call – after the sacking – for Ministerial Services to investigate whether any official resources had been misused during the affair is also bizarre. Normally, the evidence is gathered first in a serious matter like this, not called for after the event.

Overall, it raises the suspicion that Lees-Galloway’s dismissal was based more on getting shy of a potential embarrassment ahead of the election than a judgment on his personal conduct. The Prime Minister may also have felt she had no alternative, given both the way in which the Leader of the Opposition had raised the matter, and had the previous day dismissed Andrew Falloon. Whatever the reason, it will have further eroded confidence in a political system reeling after recent events.

Nominations to stand for Parliament at this year’s election close on August 21. With dark rumours still swirling from both sides of politics, and the mentality of “gotcha politics” that has become an unwelcome aspect of New Zealand politics in recent years, the daunting reality now is that more scandals coming to light before then cannot, unfortunately, be ruled out.

The period of Matariki, the celebration of the Māori New Year, which began earlier this week, is being celebrated increasingly as an important national event. While many other countries have their own form of New Year celebrations, Matariki is uniquely New Zealand. As such, it deserves special recognition. We already celebrate great annual events from other cultures, such as Diwali and Chinese New Year, which is good, but now is the time to give Matariki the prominence it deserves. 

Yet most of the celebrations around Matariki are locally organised. Usually local communities and councils play their part in putting together local festivities such as fireworks displays or other celebratory events. Unlike Waitangi Day, or even ANZAC Day, the two other uniquely New Zealand special days which we commemorate each year, there is no national occasion organised to celebrate Matariki.

The time has come to change that. Matariki deserves its own special day of celebration and is worthy of a public holiday in its honour. Even though there is a general wariness in New Zealand about creating more public holidays – as the debate a few years ago about ‘Mondayising’ Waitangi and ANZAC Days showed – we are still on the light side of the number of public holidays most countries celebrate. Adding another holiday to celebrate a significant national event is unlikely to bring the economy to its knees as some critics might argue.

In any case, the establishment of a national public holiday to mark Matariki need not entail the creation of an additional public holiday. It could be done by simply replacing an existing public holiday that has become obsolete. An obvious candidate in this regard is the current Queen’s Birthday holiday at the start of June.

As New Zealand culturally diversifies, the celebration of the British Monarch’s birthday, with full military honours and all the trappings besides becomes more and more incongruous. At a time when New Zealand is trying to shake off the final vestiges of its colonial past and assert its identity as a modern Pacific nation nothing can continue to appear more absurd than the annual official celebration of the birthday of a hereditary ruler on the other side of the world. Queen’s Birthday holiday is an occasion whose time has well and truly past, and it should be replaced with an event far more relevant to the lives and world views of contemporary New Zealanders.

Matariki Day would be the perfect substitute for the anachronistic Queen’s Birthday. Occurring at about the same time of year as Queen’s Birthday, Matariki would also have the practical advantage of ensuring that New Zealanders still get a public holiday during the long winter months. The Queen’s Birthday Honours List could easily become the Matariki Honours List, which would be a nice counterpoint to the New Year’s Honours List released in January. And the dwindling pageantry now associated with Queen’s Birthday could be incorporated into the wider celebrations of Matariki, if it be so wished. In short, Matariki has a far more New Zealand ring about it than Queen’s Birthday ever did.

Bicultural New Zealand has been engaged in an often too timid assertion of its national identity for some generations now. Yet while our population has become more diverse, and our absorption of aspects of other cultures more extensive, especially since the 1990s, we have been too slow to move to ensure that our national structures reflect both that emerging diversity and our own bicultural environment. Despite successive Prime Ministers piously acknowledging the inevitability that New Zealand will become a republic, none has done anything to advance that. And notwithstanding Britain’s abrupt casting aside of New Zealand when it wanted to join the European Community in the 1970s, New Zealand has rushed to be near the top of the queue in negotiating a free trade agreement with Britain now that it has decided it no longer wants to be part of Europe after all.  

The time has come for this country to start matching its lofty and bold talk about our progressive and independent identity with some action that shows we take that talk seriously. Continuing the way we are, with no substantive action to follow, will, over time, led to more and more alienation and potential social division. Moving now to replace Queen’s Birthday with the far more relevant Matariki Day would be a simple, but important step forward and a signal that as a country we were genuine in our desire to establish and promote our identity and pride in all facets of what it means to be a New Zealander today.

There can be few more spectacular political own goals than that just scored against the National Party by first-term Clutha-Southland MP, Hamish Walker this week. The consequences for Walker personally, and his eminence grise, Michelle Boag, have been grim and dire, but the incident is potentially catastrophic for the National Party, just over ten weeks away from the general election.

Not only will things drag on for a while, as the Herron inquiry, and a possible investigation by the Privacy Commissioner unfold, there is also the possibility of separate legal action arising from these investigations. Then, there is the prospect of a hurried and intense candidate selection process as for the second time in three years the National Party looks to find a suitable candidate to take over what has always been one of its safest electorates. None of this is likely to be good news for the National Party.

It all makes the Jami-Lee Ross saga of last year look like a distant storm in a teacup. That matter is now before the High Court and the National Party will be relieved that a trial date has been set for September next year, so sparing it from any further embarrassing revelations on that score before the election. Winston Peters may be even be breathing a sigh of relief too that any detrimental finding by the Serious Fraud Office in its inquiry into the New Zealand First Foundation may not now look as bad.

National leader Todd Muller seems to have been blindsided by the whole Walker affair, although some are trying to draw links between Boag and Muller, given the assistance she apparently provided during his campaign for the National Party leadership. However, he seems determined to try and make the best of what is an almost impossibly bad situation.

His initial response to Walker’s admission was considered by some to be too bland – a mere expression of disappointment – although we now know that was as much a consequence of the legal actions already being undertaken by lawyers acting on Walker’s behalf. But the decisiveness of his subsequent actions – stripping Walker of all his Caucus responsibilities and asking the Party’s governing board to expel him altogether from the Party – will have taken his critics by surprise. Walker’s recognition that his political career was over and that he should best stand down was no less swift.

Muller has always insisted that his mild demeanour should not be mistaken for a lack of political steel or the ruthlessness need to be an effective political leader. But it is one thing to say these things about one’s self and then have them believed by a normally sceptical public, but something else altogether to be able to demonstrate them. Unwelcome and annoying as the incident undoubtedly is for Muller, its circumstances have allowed him to show the decisiveness and ruthlessness he has said he possesses.

Walker’s rapid journey to oblivion will have been met with approval by his angry Caucus colleagues, perhaps fearing that their own prospects of holding their own seats at the election, let alone being able to form a government, will be rapidly disappearing with him. At the same time, they will have also taken on board the message that Muller is not to be trifled with, and that he will not tolerate disloyal or dishonourable actions by his MPs.

Beyond the National Party, Muller’s handling of the Walker case provides a stark contrast to the way in which the Prime Minister has dealt with cases involving her own Ministers. Admittedly, her cases have been more about sheer Ministerial incompetence – Curran, Twyford, Lees-Galloway and Clark, for example – than actions that have been disreputable. Nevertheless, the general pattern that has emerged over the last three years has been of a Prime Minister disinclined to act decisively when cases of Ministerial incompetence and poor performance occur. The recent example of the prolonged retention of David Clark bordered on the painfully embarrassing, until he finally recognised that he was a liability and resigned.

Muller will be hoping that the public will react favourably to the way he has dealt with Walker, compared to the more drawn-out and indeterminate processes applying to government Ministers. But any kudos he gains will be small, as the consequences of the Walker affair for the National Party are just too overwhelming.

Recent opinion polls have shown high levels of trust and confidence in the government’s Covid19-related actions. While there is an acknowledgement that not everything has been anywhere near as perfect or smooth as Ministers like to suggest, the government was winning support for “doing its best” in unprecedented circumstances. National’s hope was that public frustration with the bungles, such as the recent border control failures, would grow to the extent that concern about competence came to outweigh trust in the government’s “doing its best”.

The Walker incident has blown that hope out of the water. Now, any future concerns National raises about the competence of government actions, based on information it has obtained through official and other legitimate sources, will be easily dismissed as dirty and desperate politics. Any trust in National as the party best to rely on to lead New Zealand through the difficult few years of recovery ahead has been seriously damaged.

No wonder Todd Muller is angry. He has every reason to be. After all, it is not every day one of your most junior MPs turns your party into the best reason yet for re-electing your opponents to office.

Over 20 years after the event, the Scott Watson murder case continues to attract public attention. Last week’s decision by the Governor-General to refer the case back to the Court of Appeal is but the latest step in this long saga.

The Watson case is one of a handful of cases from the 1970s to the 1990s which aroused considerable doubt about the original convictions and led to their being eventually overturned. Arthur Allan Thomas was twice convicted for the Crewe murders in 1970, before being pardoned and released from prison in 1979 following a Royal Commission of Inquiry. David Bain’s conviction and imprisonment for murdering his family in 1994 was overturned at a retrial which acquitted him in 2009. Teina Pora was convicted of murder in 1994 and was in prison for 20 years before being released. His conviction was subsequently quashed by the Privy Council. Rex Haig’s murder conviction in 1995 was quashed in 2006, while he was on parole after serving 10 years in prison. Scott Watson was convicted and sentenced in 1999, with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years, and he is still in prison after 21 years.

Separate to these, but no less significant, is the case of David Tamihere, convicted in 1990 of the murder of two Swedish backpackers. His appeals to the Court of Appeal and the Privy Council after the discovery of massive conflicts between the evidence presented and the emergence of subsequent contradictory facts both failed, and he served 20 years in prison before being released, still protesting his innocence. Earlier, this year, the Governor-General referred his case back to the Court of Appeal for further consideration.

And then there is the case of Peter Ellis, convicted in 1993 of child abuse, twice upheld subsequently by the Court of Appeal, and once more by a separate Ministerial Inquiry, who served his full sentence of 10 years before being released. Now, following Ellis’ death last year, a final approach is being made to the Court of Appeal to posthumously clear his name of what many consider to have been an appalling miscarriage of justice.

Over the years, I have read almost everything that has been published about the Scott Watson case, as well as speaking to many people directly involved. I am still unsure whether his conviction was justified by the evidence available. An aspect of the case that has always bothered me is the Police insistence from the outset that the young couple were last seen on a distinctive ketch (a double-masted yacht), whereas Watson’s yacht was a sloop – a single-masted vessel.

Many witnesses came forward saying they had seen a ketch that matched the original description given by the Police in and around the Marlborough Sounds at the time. Indeed, I saw such a ketch in Westport a few weeks later, which I subsequently reported to the Police, who, by then focused on Watson’s sloop,  told me emphatically “there was no ketch”, even as a poster describing the ketch and seeking information about it hung incongruously on the wall behind them!

While our system of jury trials is probably the best and fairest available, there will always be incidences where the complexity of the case, or the paucity of incontrovertible evidence increase the possibility of a mistake being made and a miscarriage of justice occurring. The right of appeal to the Court of Appeal, then the Supreme Court or ultimately the Governor-General, is a sufficient safeguard in most cases to ensure that eventually a just and correct decision is reached. But as the Thomas, Bain, Pora, Haig, Ellis and now potentially Tamihere and Watson cases have all shown, there will still be some cases that will leave a measure of public unease that the legal system, however fully applied, cannot resolve.

In that regard, the formal establishment this week of the Criminal Cases Review Commission is an important and welcome step forward. In essence, it will replace the referral function of the Governor-General, as exercised in the Watson case,  with an independent statutory commission able to investigate on its own behalf cases where a possible miscarriage of justice may have occurred and to refer such cases back to the Courts if it considers that is the appropriate thing to do. The Commission’s statutory independence should ensure that it can proactively examine cases that come before it fully and independently without having to rely solely on the evidence previously collected. In that way, it is hoped that the cases the Commission considers can be judged more holistically than on the current basis of whether the Police and prosecution or the defence got it right.

The prolonged nature of resolution of each of the cases referred to above has been unsatisfactory in many respects. There has been the length of time taken, and the unreasonableness of the impositions on the freedom of the individuals, especially in the Thomas, Bain, Pora and Haig cases where the convictions were ultimately overturned. And each case and its course has also led to a measure of weakened public confidence in the current system, as the ongoing Tamihere, Ellis and Watson cases currently suggest.

Arguably, the system eventually got it right in the Thomas, Bain Pora and Haig cases, leaving us all to ponder how much more tragic the outcome might have been had capital punishment still been in place.

Whatever the eventual outcome of the Tamihere, Ellis and Watson cases, the establishment of the Criminal Cases Review Commission should mean that where such cases arise in the future, as they will inevitably, an outcome can be reached much more rapidly, without those affected having to prove their innocence while spending many unnecessary years languishing  in prison.