The Government is staying tight-lipped on whether any Cabinet members stood up against its now-scrapped plan to introduce GST onto KiwiSaver fees.
There has been a major fallout over the past couple of days after Revenue Minister David Parker was forced to make a stunning U-Turn on the legislation on Wednesday, after only introducing it on Tuesday.
Experts had dubbed the changes a "brand new tax".
Parker on Wednesday admitted the move was embarrassing but denied the Government tried to sneak the legislation through without the public knowing.
National Party Finance spokesperson and deputy leader Nicola Willis on Thursday said the legislation was collective negligence from Cabinet.
"This isn't one guy's failure - this is the Government collectively saying, 'We're OK with putting a tax on New Zealanders' KiwiSavers.'"
Asked on Friday if Cabinet members knew the implications of the legislation, which would've seen KiwiSaver investors $103 billion poorer by 2070, senior Labour minister Michael Wood said the Government was trying to strike a balance.
"In this case, it was about the fact that we've got a sector where some get charged a fee and some don't," he told AM host Ryan Bridge.
"The idea was to balance that up… We pretty clearly heard the message that that wasn't welcome by the sector and we took steps to deal with that."
While the move was originally approved by Cabinet and introduced in Parliament earlier this week, before being scrapped after the backlash, Wood would not say if any Cabinet members stood up against it.
"We've got a very long-standing convention in New Zealand across Governments - we don't talk about what happens within Cabinet," he said. "We back the decisions that we made and, ultimately, we've made the decision not to move ahead with this."
The Opposition said the move could be one of the Government's sneakiest moves yet, but Wood said there was "no hiding anything".
"We heard the feedback, we made changes," he said.
Meanwhile, National MP Erica Stanford, appearing on AM alongside Wood, reiterated her party wouldn't touch KiwiSaver if elected.
The last National Government did make changes - slapping a tax on employer contributions and ditching the $1000 kickstart.
Stanford blasted the Government for choosing the path it went down, after revelations Inland Revenue gave ministers another choice to even the tax playing field for providers and cut GST on fees altogether.
"Of course, they chose the option that put $200 million in the coffers next year because they like to sneak in these taxes."
Parker, meanwhile, said earlier this week he believed the proposal was misrepresented.
"We would obviously have preferred that the people we thought would come out in support of this had," Parker said. "The fact that they haven't caused us to reverse our position. We think that was the right thing to do as the furore around this was denting public confidence in KiwiSaver."
