Te Ara Ahunga Ora Retirement Commission has been slammed as an "insular bureaucracy" which is completely unrealistic about the financial impact of its own pronouncements.
The comments come from the ACT Party, whose election policy for seniors makes clear the Commission's wings need to be clipped. This follows an increase in research by the Commission and a highly publicised switch in favour of retaining the current age of eligibility for superannuation at 65.
Previous retirement commissioners and the ACT Party itself have called for the age to be raised to protect governments against expensive future liabilities.
In its comments about the Commission, ACT is scathing.
"The state sector is full of quangos that achieve very little for the taxpayer funding poured into them," ACT says.
"The Retirement Commission is one such organisation, where significant time and resource is committed to writing policy and research that could easily be (and often is) replicated by other government departments.
"The Retirement Commission epitomises what one would imagine an insular bureaucracy would get up to. It writes long reports with recommendations that it has no power to implement, without any analysis of the trade-offs or fiscal implications of its recommendations."
ACT adds the resources spent on "national strategies and events calendars" could have gone straight to the back pockets of New Zealanders so that they can spend and save themselves.
It adds this is a shame, because an ageing population will need more support then ever.
"Instead, older people are being poorly served by an impotent bureaucracy."
To fix this problem, a reformed Retirement Commission would have to focus on retirement villages and in-home care.
The former role would deal with difficult issues that have been raised about retirement villages in recent debates, such as the effectiveness of disclosure statements, occupation right agreements, the maintenance of retirement village units and other matters.
Regarding in-home care, ACT wants the Commission to help develop a model for individualised funding of this service, rather than "requiring those who need in-home care to navigate a bureaucratic model of contracted health services managed by Te Whatu Ora."
It says this could develop a system which is suited to the particular needs of older people.
"Individualised funding can fit in with clients’ lifestyle and empowers them to make their own choices about service providers."
The Commission itself is not commenting on the ACT statement under a tradition that state agencies avoid entanglement with electoral arguments between competing political parties.
However, actions in the past suggest the Commission is setting out to do research that it says other state agencies are ignoring, rather than reinventing the wheel, as ACT suggests.
These include research on gender gaps in KiwiSaver, problems with financial literacy and retirement issues facing Maori and Pasifika.
The Commission has increased its research staff to better explore these issues.
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