Super bill faces rocky road

Any feeling the Government's New Zealand Superannuation Bill will have an easy passage through the select committee process because it got cross party support in Parliament is wrong.

ACT leader Richard Prebble showed in his self-billed "state of the nation" speech that any support ACT has shown for the bill is superficial.

"The Cullen scheme is at least doing something," Prebble says, "but the devil is in the detail with superannuation. With Cullen's scheme, the whole of hell is in the detail."

He says ACT intends to take finance minister Michael Cullen up on his willingness to accept constructive amendments.

ACT is clearly going to push hard for individual accounts. Likewise the Greens have talked about investing the fund ethically, yet they haven't articulated what they mean.

There are a number of different styles of ethical investing which range from the pure - where you can't invest in stocks of companies which make things like alcohol, tobacco or munitions - to "best of bred", a version which is essentially normal investing with a green flavour.

Under this method a fund can invest in any sector (even the sin sectors) as long as the individual company is 'ethically' managed.

The other main concern is that the bill has been oversold to the public. That is, many people see it as being the panacea to the super conundrum and they don't need to save.

NZ Super is often talked about as being generous at 65 per cent of the net average weekly wage. But, as Investment Savings and Insurance Association chief executive Vance Arkinstall points out, that's 65 per cent for a married couple, not each individual. In reality the scheme will only provide a basic safety net.