Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Andrew Dickens: We need to do something about the retirement age

Transcript

Andrew Dickens: We need to do something about the retirement age · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So National's released its fiscal policy. It's easy to generalise
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the plan as more of the same that we've already seen,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: and the only real difference with Labour is that they're
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: in love with pay equity, which National is not, and
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: of course that comes at a huge cost, and it
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: leaves the whole balancing act with very little wriggle room.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: But the enormous ogre under the bridge is the rapidly
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: expanding cost of superannuation, and how long are we going
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: to talk in circles about this? ACT has said let's
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: raise it to 67. That's not crazy. In Australia, Denmark, Iceland, Israel, Italy,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: the Netherlands and the United States and Norway at 67.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: In the UK at 66, plan to go to 68.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Canada and Japan have it at 65. But we're becoming
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: the outliers. Everybody else is doing it. Why don't we?
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: All it takes is a political leader saying, let's do it.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: David Seymour said, let's do it. Chris Hipkins hasn't. And
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: now National is saying, we'll do it, but only if
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: everyone else wants to do it, which is the way
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: they seem to approach many things. National Labour and New
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Zealand First are running scared because they're scared of how
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: older people will react. But if you're already getting the super,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: what's your beef? You can't sit there complaining about our
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: books and being resistant to actually a rise in the age.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: I'm in my 60s. It will not affect me. So
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: what's to worry about? See, I've only got a year
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: or two until I can get the pension. 50-year-olds, I understand,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: they're going to be jittery about it. Under 40s should
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: already know the issue and They should be preparing for
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: the new eventuality and not praying that at 66 the
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: state will start looking after them a bit. 67 seems
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: to make total sense. It's been told that you've been
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: told it's total sense by every economist in the world
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: and half our parties and most of our trading partners.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: So why don't we do it? It seems like the
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: leaders of our biggest parties seem unable to lead on
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: this issue because some people might react negatively. And that
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: doesn't sound like leadership to me.