National has pinched one of Labour’s proudest achievements

Wednesday, 1 July 2026

Sam Stubbs is the co-founder and managing director of Simplicity.

OPINION: After National announced its call for compulsory KiwiSaver last week along with a slew of other enhancements for those on parental leave, over 65s and children, they have been bathing in its popularity.

This should not be a surprise. More popular than chocolate and with almost three quarters of us in favour of making it compulsory, KiwiSaver is a policy that political parties should be falling over each other to make theirs.

National has done exactly that and, it appears from the past week’s press conferences and media appearances, much to the annoyance of Labour who has been its natural champion since its inception under Michael Cullen. But now KiwiSaver has well over three million members, and many of them will not be Labour supporters.

Labour should have known that National saw it as fair game, when the KiwiSaver contribution rates were increased in the last budget - the first time, ever, that National had done anything to grow KiwiSaver. It was a hint that more was to follow.

National stealing the KiwiSaver crown - temporarily at least - may also be warming us up to the fiscal reality of New Zealand Superannuation payments, which will cost taxpayers $30 billion a year by 2030, and growing.

That means any Minister of Finance needs to find more than $1 billion of extra funding, every year, for growing superannuation payments. The maths are certain, and scary.

But there is almost no room for any Government to manoeuvre on ‘the pension’ as more people are in, or getting closer, to retirement every year and every one of them has a vote.

Hence NZ First’s ‘hands off our National Super’ battle cry, and their current popularity. Any change to National Super which the public will approve also needs a pathway to individual prosperity for all of us. No one will vote to get less money from the Government unless more is coming from somewhere else.

I suspect that National has - finally - cottoned on to the fact that KiwiSaver could now provide that, in a way the public can believe. National’s KiwiSaver announcement feels like the first part of a retirement policy revamp.

All is not lost for Labour though. They can, quite rightly, say that it has taken National 15 years to wake up to what they already knew. In that sense, agreeing with what they have done, but saying it’s not enough, would show a bi-partisan, co-operative spirit to solving our retirement funding problem, while grabbing back the moral authority on KiwiSaver.

And there are gaps to be filled in National’s policy, especially in the way some employers use KiwiSaver payments to force lower wages via total remuneration contracts. Arguably, the 12% contribution level is too much - most actuaries would say a rise to 10% total contributions is plenty.

There is also a real debate about whether all employees should contribute to KiwiSaver, especially when so many are doing it tough right now. If Labour said employee contributions would be voluntary going forward, with employer contributions rising .5% a year, to 10% over time, that would give every KiwiSaver contributor more cash to spend now, and grow KiwiSaver in a sustainable and predictable way.

That’s what the Aussies did, and it has worked magnificently.

I never thought National would steal the KiwiSaver crown from Labour. But, temporarily at least, they have. As Nicola Willis bathes in the glory, Labour should agree with what she’s proposed, say it’s not enough, and move us to a model that has worked so well in Australia.

After all, they’re a country with 5x our population but 30x our retirement savings. Enough said.

Sam Stubbs is the co-founder and managing director of Simplicity.