Raising super to 67 is the bare minimum nobody else will promise

David Seymour is doing what nobody else running for office this year will do. He is putting a dollar figure on the age of eligibility for NZ Super. ACT’s fiscal plan, due Sunday 11 October, a day ahead of National’s, will recommit to lifting the age to 67, he signalled this week.

The policy is not new. What is striking is how lonely ACT has become in arguing for it.

The arithmetic Seymour keeps reading out

Speaking to Gravity Credit Management, Seymour gave the case in a few lines. “The superannuation bill is rising at nearly $2 billion each year. Longer lives, fewer kids. Only two taxpayers per superannuitant by mid-century. Something has to give, and it will,” he said, adding that the choice is whether to plan a gradual change “or let it happen to us fast amidst a fiscal crisis.”

He costed it too. Adjusting the age by three months saves about $400 million, he said, while two years would save over $3 billion a year, nearly three quarters of a percent of GDP. ACT’s conditions are KiwiSaver access from 65, early compassionate access for people with 20-plus years in physical jobs, and no tax on KiwiSaver investment returns.

Seymour also took aim at the broader fiscal picture, saying the promised surplus rests on “heroic” revenue assumptions and that after three Willis budgets New Zealand is “two thirds closer to peak Covid spending than pre-Covid spending”.

National saw the numbers and stepped back

The sharper story is National. On 29 September the Herald reported Christopher Luxon and Nicola Willis were softening National’s long-held support for 67, citing missing political consensus. That came straight after Treasury’s pre-election report, which found demographics make the long-term trajectory unsustainable, with 120,000 more recipients expected in four years and the total passing one million in 2027/28.

Luxon now says the age “probably” should rise. In June, Willis called it “a great idea, and I hope that future government gets to deliver it”. That is not leadership. That is a Finance Minister handing the problem to her successor.

Labour, the Greens and NZ First are all campaigning to keep 65. So the only costed proposal belongs to the smallest party plausibly in government. Whatever the election result, there is no credible path to legislated change in the next term.

Even 67 is the polite number

Here is the part nobody on the hustings wants to say. In its 2025 Long-term Fiscal Statement, Treasury found that holding NZ Super’s cost steady as a share of GDP through age alone would require eligibility to reach 72 by 2065. The same document put spending at 5.1% of GDP, heading toward roughly 8% by 2065, as the worker-to-retiree ratio falls from 4:1 to 2:1. In the 1960s it was 7:1.

The trend was visible years ago. A 2023 Treasury OIA response put super at 16.63% of total tax revenue in 2022/23, forecast to reach 21.35% by 2036/37.

There is a counter-argument worth hearing. The Society of Actuaries’ retirement income group argued in 2024 that reform was not strictly necessary because “expenditure is a policy choice”, noting 70% of OECD countries kept pension ages at 65 or lower. Fair enough. But a policy choice still has to be paid for, and nobody promising to keep 65 is explaining which taxes rise or which spending falls.

Your workforce is ageing regardless of the vote

Business owners do not need Parliament to tell them this. Stats NZ projected in 2025 that the labour force aged 65-plus would grow from 220,000 in 2024 to as many as 460,000 by 2051, lifting its share from 7% to as much as 11%. The ratio of people outside the labour force to those in it could rise from 72 per 100 to 103 per 100 by 2078. Earlier population projections had the over-65 share climbing from 16% to as much as 32% by 2073.

That means retaining, retraining and accommodating older staff is a planning issue now, not when Wellington finally moves. It also means a smaller tax base carrying a bigger bill, which lands on employers through payroll, company tax and whatever levy comes next.

KiwiSaver is where the fight is really heading

Watch the fine print rather than the headline age. ACT wants KiwiSaver kept available at 65 and its returns untaxed. National wants compulsion and higher default rates. Both point to private saving doing more of the heavy lifting, and both carry costs for employers who fund contributions.

Seymour deserves credit for forcing the arithmetic onto the table. But if 67 is the bare minimum and even that is too politically hot for National, the honest conclusion is that New Zealand is choosing the fast, crisis-driven version of reform he warned about. Businesses should plan accordingly.

Sources

• RNZ: David Seymour again hints at retirement age increase if ACT elected (2026-10-08)
• NZ Herald: Election 2026: Act’s David Seymour says world watching New Zealand’s ‘dumpster fire policy debate’ (2026-10-07)
• NZ Herald: National softens its language on lifting Super eligibility age, saying political consensus is needed, but missing (2026-09-29)
• RNZ: Seymour thinks Peters could be convinced to support raising retirement age (2026-06-23)
• Treasury: Official Information Act Response 20230155 – Superannuation data (2023-08)
• NZ Society of Actuaries: New Zealand Superannuation – An actuarial view on reform (2024-01)
• Stats NZ: National labour force projections 2024(base)-2078 (2025-06-25)
• Stats NZ: National population projections 2022(base)-2073 (2022)