Candidates face large Grey Power crowd in Napier

Will Jenkins of NZ First (left), Labour MP Stuart Nash, Ikaroa Rawhiti Labour MP Meka Whaitiri, Green Party candidate Damon Rusden and National candidate David Elliott. Photo / Paul Taylor

Pledges to continue putting money into the New Zealand superannuation fund and charge a levy on water bottlers secured the approval of the audience at a Napier Grey Power Meet the Candidates event yesterday.

Incumbent Napier Labour MP Stuart Nash, with Labour MP for Ikaroa Rawhiti Meka Whaitiri and Napier candidates Damon Rusden (Green Party), David Elliott (National) and NZ First representative Will Jenkins faced about 200 people at St Colomba's Church in Taradale.

They were asked a series of questions centred mainly, but not completely, on issues affecting older people, including each of their party policies on raising the superannuation age and contributing to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund.

Mr Elliott said the Government's rationale for raising the retirement age from 65 to 67 in 20 years' time was practical and sensible in the light of the country's ageing population.

He said at present 5700 people were aged 95 and over. This would rise to 45,000 by 2040.

"National made a tough decision - everyone said not to touch it in an election year but we recognised it's the responsible thing to do - we're a small country and we have to adjust for an ageing population."

Mr Rusden was applauded when he said the Green Party would continue putting money into the Cullen Fund, a step Labour was committed to as well, said Mr Nash.

"The Cullen Fund was last year worth $35 billion but if the Government had continued to contribute to it, it would have reached $52b by now," Mr Nash said.

Raising the retirement age would be a regressive step, which would see people who had worked in hard manual labour for a lifetime turning to the sickness benefit, as happened when the age was raised from 60 to 65, he added.

Mr Jenkins said that with seniors and veterans uppermost in the mind of NZ First, superannuation would be retained at 65 as a universal, publicly funded pension scheme with no means testing.

He added that NZ First would make contributing to KiwiSaver compulsory.

Questions also touched on the housing crisis, to which Ms Whaitiri said Labour would support councils to keep providing pensioner housing, and would halt the state housing sell-off.

Mr Jenkins said healthy, warm homes were a fundamental human right and although NZ First had not completely developed its policy, it would provide low-cost government funding to councils for new elderly housing and public rental housing projects.

Mr Elliott said the Government was committed to building more state houses and that Housing New Zealand was currently buying houses and increasing the stock.

"No more state housing stock will be sold off if it's required," he said.

Mr Rusden noted National was also buying a lot of motels to accommodate homeless people, and said the Greens would build 10,000 homes over three years in a rent-to-buy scheme.

An unscheduled question asked for the parties' position on taxing water that was bottled and exported.

Mr Nash said this issue was raised a lot across Hawke's Bay.

"People can't understand - we are giving water away for free so people can make a profit.

"I believe if you are using water for necessities you should not pay for it but if it's being used to make a profit then yes, you should pay for it."

Mr Jenkins said NZ First's policy was to charge a 25 per cent royalty on extraction, which would go back to the local region the water came from.

Mr Elliott said if charges were going to be placed on extracting water that could affect water that was going into the production of commodities such as milk, with the extra cost passed on to consumers.

"I would support charging for bottling water only if you could find a way to ringfence it so people are not paying for it in their other everyday activities."

Mr Rusden said the Greens policy was a 10 cent levy on water exports with half that money going back to the community where the water was sourced to help councils pay for fresh water infrastructure, and half being allocated to iwi.