The gloves are off between the coalition partners as election promises heat up, writes Madeleine Chapman in today’s excerpt from The Bulletin.

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Two policies, one vision

The National Party announced a suite of changes to Kiwisaver, if elected, at its annual party conference on Sunday. The policy would see the savings scheme made compulsory for all workers, and (as already announced) incrementally increase the default employee-employer contributions until they are 6% each in 2032. The government increased default contributions from 3% to 3.5% last year, which came into effect in April. This new policy would also instate Kiwisaver contributions by the government for new parents on paid parental leave, automatically enrol newborns from 2027, and reinstate the government kickstart at $1,500. Jenna Lynch at Stuff has a comprehensive breakdown of the policy from a party previously lukewarm on the retirement saving programme launched under Labour.

NZ First leader Winston Peters thought the policy looked familiar. Last month, he announced his party’s own Kiwisaver policy which also included enrolling every newborn citizen, increasing default contributions and giving a kickstart of $1,000. In his speech, Luxon criticised NZ First’s companion promise to buy back BNZ, to which Peters responded to Stuff: “It must be slightly embarrassing to first criticise NZ First then have to copy our policies.”

If you’re wondering how National’s policy will impact you specifically, Henry Cooke at The Post (paywalled) has a handy calculator. Spoiler: Much like now, self-employed New Zealanders will reap the fewest benefits.

Ghosts of policies past

If all of these proposals are ringing a 12-year-old bell in your brain, that’s because they are almost identical to Labour’s ill-fated 2014 election policy, which promised:

• Compulsory Kiwisaver for every employee aged 18 to 65 from 2014.
• Gradual increase of employer contributions at a rate of 0.5% a year, from 3% to 7% over nine years. 

The policy was criticised by National at the time, Labour suffered an historic defeat and three years later, both parties united in campaign promises to not make the scheme compulsory. (NZ First is the only party consistently in favour of making it compulsory.) Labour hasn’t announced a Kiwisaver policy yet, while Act has long been opposed to any Kiwisaver changes that would increase employer or government contributions.

Over on RNZ, Susan Edmunds asked economists whether all New Zealanders will be able to afford compulsory contributions. In short, no, said Simplicity chief economist Shamubeel Eaqub. “My idea always was to make the employer contributions compulsory and the employee contribution voluntary. If you unlink those two things immediately this impact on people’s incomes, on take-home pay, disappears.”

Coalition daddy issues

National used its party conference to announce its new NZ First-like policy details, but also took the opportunity to explicitly distance itself from its coalition partners. In a Freudian somersault, health minister Simeon Brown painted a familial picture of the coalition to party faithful. “There are two kids in this house. They get on fine with Mum and Dad, but not always with each other,” he said, less than an hour before both “kids” heavily criticised their parents’ Kiwisaver policy.

Winston Peters has not responded to the suggestion that Brown is his daddy, but Lyric Waiwiri-Smith was there for The Spinoff and has all the family drama.

The Greens’ tax plan

Announced formally on Sunday but accidentally posted on the party website and reported a day early, the Greens’ tax policy presented a scaled back version of its wealth tax proposed in last year’s alternative budget. Instead of 2025’s 2.5% tax on net assets over $2 million, the new policy includes a “super-rich tax” of 2.5% on net assets over $10m. At the other end of the spectrum, a $10,000 tax-free threshold has been proposed. Jamie Ensor has all the details for the Herald, and notes it is virtually impossible for the full policy to be implemented, given Labour leader Chris Hipkins has been very clear his party would only implement its own capital gains tax and would not “support other new taxes like an inheritance tax or a wealth tax”.