Rewarding service: a history of the Government Superannuation Fund by Neill Atkinson.

AuthorReeves, Ann
PositionBook Review

This slim volume, Rewarding Service, published by the Otago University Press, documents the history of the Government Superannuation Fund from its establishment in 1948 through a host of reforms, and concludes with remarks on the environment facing the scheme in 2002.

Nell Atkinson has managed to enliven the potentially dull material by two methods. Firstly, he has included some fascinating photographs, largely from the Alexander Turnbull Library's collections, and recounted anecdotes concerning the various political and non-political personalities and events connected with the scheme. So a Colonel T. W. McDonald stands at attention beside an outline of the Colonel's unrelenting 46-year campaign seeking redress for his claim of being owed 467 [pounds sterling] unpaid salary following his dismissal from the defence forces in 1922.

The second way in which the material avoids dullness is by the careful tracing of the scheme's connections to political issues and aims.

The title of the volume invites reflection on how much the scheme has served to reward the service of public sector employees and how much the scheme reflects other aims. To read the book is to have one's eyes opened to the way in which the scheme has been used as an instrument to serve government purposes. Only rarely have good-employer objectives been a prime concern when there have been changes to the scheme. For example (p.14) "the reintroduction of government superannuation in 1886 ... was specifically designed to facilitate retrenchment in the civil service".

Given this insight into the scheme, the reader might expect that more recent reforms might have been aimed at providing some incentive to the baby-boom generation, or at least those members of that cohort employed by the government itself, to save for their retirement. Alternatively, reforms might have been aimed at providing a State model showing private sector employers the way to encourage and support their employees to provide for their later years. Instead the scheme was closed to new members in 1992 and recent evidence from the Office of the Retirement Commissioner has shown that saving for retirement is dropping rather than increasing as the baby boomers head into retirement.

The book concludes at a time when the government's April 2000 reforms to the scheme had been passed to allow funds to be invested "on a sound commercial basis", including offshore and in a wider range of other schemes than had previously...

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