What on earth?
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announces new National Party KiwiSaver policy
National pledges to further increase the default KiwiSaver contribution rate, if re-elected at the next election.
The announcement is the first firm National policy before the election, which is still about a year away.
Wait, wait, wait – let me get this straight.
National cut $500 from your KiwiSaver contribution and then when Unemployment is at a 9 year high with more kiwis than ever before taking money out of KiwiSaver for hardship, National are going to compel you to put more money into your KiwiSaver???
This isn’t Tone Dead, it’s Tone Helen Keller!
Money on the table that this is a softening up for a raise in Super to screw over Gen Xers.
So forcing higher KiwiSaver contributions in the face of a cost of living crisis, selling assets and raising Super is what National think will win them the next election?
National are living in la-la land.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
As a JP I’ve seen a surge in people wanting to access their KiwiSaver because of hardship which is sad in itself, but what I find disturbing is the fatalism and numb acceptance of some of my clients.
Every solitary policy/bill this knee-jerking CoC touches is so poorly researched, badly timed and severely lacking in detail. They are an embarrassment and an insult to our intelligence. They are in such a huge rush to get all their wish-list items out there – however badly done – to try to justify their existence. We all know they got into power by lying, bribing and making promises they knew they would never be able to keep. Again, NZ’ers will not be the winners with this one. How can we have respect for this incompetent mob of shysters? They are like toddlers holding out their potties so we can see how clever they have been! Yet another Rip Sh&t or Bust, AKA Regulatory Standards Bill! Please make them go away, please!
Actually national have cut the Govt kiwisaver share by $542 under John key and $261 under Luxon so $843 in total per Year in total NOT $500.
National never wanted a kiwisaver/super scheme.
From Anne Chalinor on Facebook.
The FACTS:
How big a U-turn is this for National?
National’s KiwiSaver about-face was nothing short of “spectacular”, according to Sam Stubbs, chief executive of Simplicity.
“And a decade too late”.
KiwiSaver was Labour’s baby, created in 2006, but successive National governments cut it.
The first cut came in 2009, when a National government cut the minimum contribution from 4% to 2% (which was partially reversed in 2013), abolished the member fee subsidy of $40 per saver and ended the KiwiSaver employer tax credit saying it would make KiwiSaver “more affordable for members, employers and taxpayers”.
However, in an early move, National also created what Labour called “loopholes” that allowed employers to strike individual agreements with employees under which they could deduct their employer contributions from those employees’ salaries. These were known as “total remuneration” policies.
The second cut came in 2012, when National halved the government contribution to 50c for every $1 contributed to a maximum of $521 per year, down from $1040 per year.
The third cut came in 2015, when the $1000 kickstarter for people opening accounts was removed.
The fourth came in Budget 2025, when once again a National-led government halved the maximum government contribution from $521 per year to $260.72.
Thanks for that – I’d forgotten bits of it. It’s a grisly story of the Nats’ long-standing determination to sabotage and vandalise the possibility of moderate prosperity for the many, in favour of excessive luxury for the few.
The increase in contributions will not be compulsory -employees can opt to stay at 3%.
But if Matyn is right, as I’m sure he is, this policy is a Trojan horse for increasing the age of entitlement for Superannuation or reducing Superannuation payments. If that happens, any average-income person who has contributed only 3% will be in the sh*t when they retire – they’ll have insufficient savings and an inadequate State pension. And now they can easily be blamed for being lazy/stupid/spendthrift, useless bottom-feeders for not contributing 6%.
At 43 billion. New Zealand’s superannuation savings pool is about 550 billion short of funding a retiree for 20 years in retirement at 80% of a retirees annual salary. Not even at 15% contribution will genx, Y, Z and millennials generate a sustainable super at a cap of 20k annual contributions on a fixed 5% interest.
For super to be sustainable the government is going to have to borrow all or some of the required super contributions and someone will have to work out a repayment schedule but anyone could bullshit up some numbers and make it legal.
This policy is a box ticking exercise for our manager PM he knows his government is becoming extremely unpalatable, to the NZ public so they are trying to look like they are actually doing something when in fact they are creating a smoke screen. In the meantime, in the background, they are busy destroying our economy, social cohesion and country. This policy has been rushed, ill thought out and has hairs on it. They have taken with one hand and given with the other as they did with our small tax increase.
This policy is a box ticking exercise for our manager PM he knows his government is becoming extremely unpalatable, to the NZ public so they are trying to look like they are actually doing something when in fact they are creating a smoke screen. In the meantime, in the background, they are busy destroying our economy, social cohesion and country. This policy has been rushed, ill thought out and has hairs on it. They have taken with one hand and given with the other as they did with our small tax increase.
This policy is a box ticking exercise for our manager PM he knows his government is becoming extremely unpalatable, to the NZ public so they are trying to look like they are actually doing something when in fact they are creating a smoke screen. In the meantime, in the background, they are busy destroying our economy, social cohesion and country. This policy has been rushed, ill thought out and has hairs on it. They have taken with one hand and given with the other as they did with our small tax increase.
covid is pa You have bought the quantum experience to the post. Three almost at once – things being in two different places at almost the same time – isn’t that what quantum is about? Trouble is these modern devices are hard to control, just watch that pressing some button doesn’t transmogrify you or something, Kafka was onto it with The Metamorphosis!
While this looks good as a headline it does seem like yet another tool for suppressing wage growth. Employers will struggle to afford it meaning they won’t pay as much and employees will end up with proportionally less in their hand. Wage growth might not keep pace with the rise in contributions so effectively wage growth will be going backwards.
And let us not forget the high fees taken from Kiwisaver by the provider and then ask yourself, what is the governments contribution to this given they have decided to bet with other people’s money and pulled out of not using their own.
Yes, they trimmed the $500, not ideal, but at least they’re pushing people to actually save, instead of relying on the magical thinking that the Super fairy will still be flitting around in 30 years. And if Gen X has to contribute a bit more now so we’re not all eating cat food at 67, that’s hardly oppression. National aren’t tone deaf, they’re just the first ones willing to say out loud that you can’t build a retirement on vibes, overdrafts, and hot takes.
By contributing more now they WILL be eating cat food now, given this Government is tone deaf on not offering anything but a low wage economy. In fact, they promote it.
I am sure that cutting the kiwi saver government share is extremely off putting not just “not ideal” ,it used to be a $1000 a nice little start to your savings now it’s hardly worth the bother of a little over $200 from the government hardly a packet of mince and a pound of butter
Norm Kirk & Bill Rowling had a scheme where people actually saved, but Muldoon & the other National muppets destroyed that although they did have help from the MSM who published National party propaganda as fact along with a gullible population who believed the lie that a pittance now was worth more than a windfall at retirement.
Did you never consider how difficult it will be for some to save as they have no spare money? I know that some people should manage their finances better but genuine hardship exists also.
National, like the UK conservatives, have reached the point of unelectability, and can float policies they’ll never need to implement because they’ll be in opposition.
Labour need to learn the lesson Starmer has refused to learn, that neoliberalism doesn’t work at all, because they’re going to be left holding the baby, and the public will not forgive them if they drop it.
KiwiSaver is a five fold scam on the working class, concocted by Labour and National working in cahoots.
It is a scam on the working class because it takes a chunk out of the miserable wages of workers and uses that money to finance their own exploitation. All the funds taken out of wages go to capitalists, and principally to foreign capitalists. (The individual worker might get back some of it at the end of their lives if three things happen. First, the worker lives beyond the normal lifespan of their class, to an age more commonly attained by the privileged classes. Second, their KiwiSaver provider does not screw up their investment portfolio. Third, that global and colonialist capitalism does not screw up the entire world and/or its own economic system over the next few decades).
It is a scam on the working class because it encourages the preposterous notion that the working class can find its salvation through individualism and capitalism – i.e. their own personal KiwiSaver account.
It is a scam on the working class because it is subverting the principle of universalism which is the only assurance of a reasonably happy retirement for the working class in the last years of their lives.
It is a scam on the working class because those of the working class who can’t afford KiwiSaver still pay the government contribution to their bosses’ bloated KiwiSaver accounts through PAYE and GST.
It is a scam on the working class because those of the working class who can’t afford KiwiSaver completely miss out on the employer contribution to which they are theoretically and morally entitled.
KiwiSaver has just one goal: to make New Zealand society more unequal and more unfair than it already is. We should not be discussing how to make it an even more effective scam. We should be discussing how to rid ourselves of it completely and entirely.