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John MacDonald: What the PM should have said about the retirement age · The SME Stream

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: You're listening to the Canterbury Mornings podcast with John McDonald
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: from News Talk Z'B.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Yesterday, in his State of the Nation's speech, which, by
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: the way, if that was the best speech Christoph Luckxon
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: could come up with after working from home since New Year,
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: there's got a bit of work to do, isn't he.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: But aside from that, in his speech yesterday, the Prime
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Minister continued the great New Zealand tradition of kicking the
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: retirement age can down the road, straight down the road.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: He said, raising the retirement age was quote inevitable. That
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: was it. In case you were waiting for more, that
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: was it inevitable. And when I say kicking the can,
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: tell her, well, you'll know as well as made it
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: was more like what like nudging the can with his foot, really,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: wasn't it. Because what the Prime Minister and every other
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: politician should be doing is showing some fortitude and accepting
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: that tweaking with just the retirement age is never going
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: to be enough, never. And you know what I think
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  Speaker 2: we should be doing. I think we should be telling
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  Speaker 2: people right now who are thirty five and younger that
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  Speaker 2: they will have to provide for themselves completely when they
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  Speaker 2: retire because there won't be a New Zealand Super pension.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: That's what I think needs to happen. Instead of increasing
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: the age of entitlement by one year or two years,
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  Speaker 2: or talking about you know means testing, This means testing.
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  Speaker 2: That's what we need to do. It's not what we
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: should do, but what we need to do is to
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  Speaker 2: ditch the New Zealand Super scheme completely, but over a
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  Speaker 2: sustained period of time, because the problem which I want
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: to solve is the fact that it is completely unsustainable
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: and there are numbers to back it up. By the
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: end of the decade, we're going to be spending thirty
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: billion dollars a year on New Zealand Super, thirty billion
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: more than the entire education budget and anything else in
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: the government's budget lines and as E columnist Brad Olsen
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: said recently, every other thing will be rats and mice
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: compared to what New Zealand Souper will be costing us
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: by the end of the decade. It's going to be
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: here pretty soon. And if we are serious about leaving
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: a legacy for future New Zealanders, which is something the
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: Prime Minister talked a lot about in the speech, yesterday.
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  Speaker 2: If we're serious about that, then we also need to
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  Speaker 2: make sure that that legacy doesn't also include lumbering future
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: generations with liabilities like an unsustainable state pension scheme. But
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: the way we're going nothing, nothing's going to change because
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: politicians that well, they're terrified of doing anything meaningful, aren't they.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: What I'm talking about here, though, would definitely be meaningful.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: They would have no immediate impact. Why because it would
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: only apply to people thirty five and younger. So all
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: the people who like to go on about the pension
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  Speaker 2: being their birthright, you know, blah blah blah, they'd still
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: get it. Japers, I'm fifty seven, I'd still get it.
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  Speaker 2: But you can't underestimate the long term benefit of doing
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: what I'm talking about. It would be what it's cot cliche.
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  Speaker 2: It would be a game change, as they say, because
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  Speaker 2: by the end of this decade, we're going to be
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: spending thirty billion dollars a year on New Zealand Super
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: thirty billion and raising the age of entitlement here and there.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: It's not going to make any dent in that whatsoever.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: The reason being we know that there are going to
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: be more and more people retiring because of the aging population,
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: more and more people turning up one of the pension. Now. Look,
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: I know that doing a way with New Zealand super
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: it would be huge, be a huge shift for New Zealand.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: But the fact of the matter is we can't afford
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: to be all sentimental about it because we have to
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: face reality that the way we do things now and
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: the way we've been doing things is not sustainable. This
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: can't continue.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: For more from Caterbory Mornings with John McDonald, listen live
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: to news talks It'd be christ Church from nine am weekdays,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.