Standing ovations at National’s 90th annual conference in Lower Hutt were “bigger, longer and louder” than anything seen since the John Key days, RNZ’s political analysis reported. The cause was a KiwiSaver package that includes making the scheme compulsory.
The pledges include compulsory KiwiSaver for all workers from July 2028 and automatic enrolment for babies, who would receive a $1500 kickstart payment. The package also adds a government contribution for parents on paid parental leave, and makes employer contributions compulsory for people over 65 who keep working.
The loudest applause went to the parental leave contribution. Christopher Luxon told delegates, “being a parent shouldn’t come at the expense of your retirement savings.” Finance Minister Nicola Willis, speaking to media afterwards, said: “this is a policy whose time has come.”
A future-focused pitch
“Building the Future” is one of the key slogans of National’s campaign, which the party has focus-grouped, RNZ said. This year’s Budget followed the same line, with no sweeteners and instead a promise of returning the books to surplus in a few years for the first time in a decade.
RNZ’s analysis noted that nothing in the KiwiSaver announcement was targeted or temporary, and that no party in Parliament would disagree with some, if not all, of the pitches. It also pointed out an oddity. Personal responsibility is a pillar of National’s identity, which makes forcing people into KiwiSaver “a tad off-brand.” A previous National government once scrapped the country’s earlier compulsory retirement savings scheme. Luxon, asked about that, said he was looking forward.
Superannuation is next
RNZ read the package as groundwork for what comes after: changes to superannuation. Willis spent an unusual amount of Budget Day talking about it. She said parties that do nothing about the entitlement age are robbing future generations for the sake of their own political expediency, and she said it with associate finance minister Shane Jones, whose party would support no such move, sitting beside her.
The analysis put the problem plainly: the maths on superannuation is increasingly not adding up, yet nobody wants to be the first cohort of New Zealanders to miss out. Touching the entitlement has long been seen as political suicide. Pairing a higher pension age with extra KiwiSaver money, from birth through retirement, may be Willis’s way of easing the pain, RNZ suggested. It added that any party planning to campaign on raising the age must find a way to sell it, because saying the country cannot afford it will not persuade voters in an election year.
Voters will deliver their verdict in November.
