Bruce Bisset - Get real on investment

Seems to me it's a bit rich for any party to be asked to "show us the money" when there is no money to show - and that there isn't owes much to New Zealand's failure to save.

Not that the average Kiwi can manage to save much in our low-wage economy, but there are several simple steps that could be taken to ensure a more productive and robust investment future.

However, don't expect to see those introduced anytime soon, since the winner-in-waiting, National, is not proposing any of them.

No, they're content just to sell and spend; their version of showing us the money is to hock off the family silver to pay for their pledges - resulting in no new money and no assets left either.

It's the Opposition parties who are taking the bold steps needed to get us focused on real investment: growing research and industry.

Everyone except John Key and co agrees the single most effective tax change that could be introduced would be a capital gains tax. This would curtail the favourite Kiwi pastime of pass-the-property in favour of investment in plant and machinery - because active business returns would then be a better bet than passive land speculation.

In turn, this would create more jobs which would generate more wealth for more investment, as well as a bigger tax take for government - around $1 billion a year.

Quite why the Nats think this a bad thing is unclear; perhaps it's because it appears to smack of some sort of means test - and means testing is anathema, they say.

Certainly that's true for another simple but effective change that could cut spending by many millions - perhaps billions - a year: a means test on superannuation.

New Zealand is the only OECD country not to have some sort of test - be it on income or assets or both - as a gate to entitlement for a pension.

Not that any party is proposing such a test here. But Labour is at least tackling the vexed super question by proposing to raise the age of eligibility from 65 to 67, ostensibly to cut costs and grow the labour force.

Personally, I don't buy that argument. Apart from annoying all those who will have to wait longer to enjoy a pension, any savings will be short lived as the retired population booms regardless.

And adding a couple of years employment at one end simply takes away at the other; at a time when the job market is thin to say the least, do we really want to add to the already-high youth unemployment rates?

Whereas a suitable means testing regime would cut costs and encourage savings.

And, let's face it, there are thousands of people for whom their force-fed pension cheque is at best an unnecessary boon and, at worst, a downright embarrassment.

Knowing the hump of baby-boomer retirees is coming, the Nats and Labour have pledged to beef up the KiwiSaver scheme: National by making it sort-of compulsory, Labour ditto plus bolstering employer contributions.

This is good; government and private pension funds are now the major movers and shakers in business investment globally and the more ours can be increased the better off we will probably be. Provided it's invested wisely and sustainably, that is.

But the current scheme has been dubbed privatisation of superannuation by stealth; the managers are private banks and insurance companies, and there are no guarantees either where or how they invest your money or that it will not disappear into some Euro black hole.

At best, given the four main banks are Australian owned, fees and profits are rapidly flowing offshore, doing little for local investment.

The Greens have just come out with a policy to counter that, calling for a KiwiSaver fund that is locally managed, to reduce fees and add $140,000 to the average person's savings - or so they estimate.

That's a good start. Because the bottom line is we need to get real about how to best cut costs and ensure we save and invest in our own future - not some other country's.

Unfortunately, it won't happen.

The current blue boys are only interested in asset-stripping.

That's the right of it.

Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.