Winston Peters wants to hike KiwiSaver contributions to 10%

Sunday, 7 September 2025

NZ First leader Winston Peters says his party will reform KiwiSaver by hiking contributions for both employers and employees to 10% of income, and cut taxes to cover the increases.

The policy promise goes further than the Coalition Government’s, which committed to rising KiwiSaver contribution rates from 3% to 4% at the 2025 Budget.

Peters, in an hour-long public speech on Sunday, instead said NZ First would campaign to raise KiwiSaver contributions to 8% of income, and then 10%.

“But here is the difference, KiwiSavers and employers will receive tax cuts to cover the increases,” he said, without providing a cost for the tax cuts.

“We are going to turn KiwiSaver into a serious New Zealand asset-owning entity.”

Such tax cuts could cost the Government billions. In the year to March 2024, New Zealanders and employers contributed $11.2 billion to KiwiSaver, according to the Financial Markets Authority.

Making KiwiSaver compulsory, as he also promised, would also bring a million more people contributing into the scheme, as 32% of members currently do not contribute.

Peters made a pledge at a public meeting at Palmerston North’s convention centre on Sunday, attended by a crowd Peters said exceeded a thousand. Certainly hundreds filled two overflow rooms, in addition to about 500 watching Peters in person.

As well as promising KiwiSaver reform, Peters said Cabinet had agreed to legislation to “finally” make English an official language of New Zealand.

He also attacked the economic “mess” left by the Labour Party, and referencing Fonterra’s sale of its brand division decried the “overseas fire-sale” sending New Zealand wealth offshore.

“We need to remember some words like incentivisation and investment to get our economy running again,” he said.

He also said New Zealand needed “smart, not more, immigration”.

Pointing to anti-immigration protests in Australia and the United Kingdom, he said “concerns are growing” about people who come to New Zealand “who don’t salute our flag, don’t honour the values of our country, don’t respect the people living here”.

“If you don't want to sign up to those values, then we’ve got a very clear answer for you: don’t come,” he said, to applause.

NZ First would campaign on all migrants signing a document that commits them to Kiwi values, Peters said.

Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden later said policy work for a values pledge for people applying for citizenship had already begun.

“I plan to have this work done and ready to bring to Cabinet this year. I also spoke to my NZ First colleague Shane Jones about the work I am doing. I’m glad to see NZ First is on board with the idea.”

Of this, Peters said “imitation is the most sincere form of flattery”.

On the Paris climate agreement, Peters said his party was calling for a “revaluation” of New Zealand’s commitment. This is another area of contest with the ACT Party, which days earlier committed to calling for “a better deal”.

Peters has not always been disparaging about the climate agreement. Peters in 2015 said that New Zealand must “meet the international agreements committed to” at the Paris conference, and his party in 2019 helped pass the Zero Carbon Act which sets out how New Zealand will meet the agreement’s commitments.

“You live with what you got,” Peters said, to reporters afterwards.

Peters also told the crowd he had won numerous battles in his “war on woke”, through pushing back on language like “pregnant persons” and various pronouns, and by submitting members’ bills to Parliament. But the war was not over, he said.

He amused the crowd with stump speech jokes about Labour leader Chris Hipkins, who he called “sausage roll eater” and said was unable to define what a woman was.

The public meeting came after NZ First held its annual convention in the city over the weekend, where party members met to discuss policies and hear from guest speakers.

Among speakers was former Labour minister Stuart Nash, who was sacked from Cabinet in March 2023 before leaving Parliament. He declared his allegiance to NZ First.

There was a sizeable security presence at the conference centre for the event on Sunday afternoon. An officer from police’s dignitary protection service scrutinised people in the crowd who brought bags into the event.

Unlike prior public speeches given by Peters, there were no disruptive protests inside the event. Outside a group of greyhound racing dog owners protested the Peters, the racing minister, closing their industry.