David Seymour isn’t ready to write off Winston Peters just yet. The ACT leader says it’s entirely possible to “teach an old dog new tricks” and he’s betting the numbers, not the politics, will eventually bring New Zealand First around to raising the retirement age.
It’s a rare moment of common-sense convergence on the right: National and ACT are both done pretending the country can keep funding superannuation at 65 forever. National’s KiwiSaver overhaul, which would make the scheme compulsory, has reignited the wider debate over super’s spiralling cost, a cost that grows harder to justify every year the eligibility age stays frozen in the past.
Seymour’s message was simple: act now, gradually, while there’s still time to do it sensibly or get forced into a panicked, chaotic fix later when a financial crisis leaves no other option.
He didn’t hold back on Labour, either. Chris Hipkins recently ruled out touching the retirement age at all, and Seymour took the opportunity to call out that head-in-the-sand approach for what it is, a refusal to deal with reality.
Of course, someone pointed out the inconvenient truth that Seymour’s own coalition partner, New Zealand First, has been just as stubborn on this issue as Labour. Seymour didn’t dodge it — he just shrugged it off with characteristic confidence.
“You know what, some people say, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” he said. “I think there’s an exception to every rule.”
And Seymour isn’t relying on persuasion alone; he’s relying on arithmetic. The demographic reality, he argues, will do the convincing all by itself.
“How do I know that? Because they’re staring us in the face,” he said, pointing to the plain fact that New Zealanders are living longer and having fewer kids than they were when the super scheme was first dreamt up.
“There’s not enough taxpayers; there are too many people on retirement for the numbers to add up.”
His fix is the kind of pragmatic, fair-minded policy ACT has built its brand on: raise the age to reflect the fact that people are simply living longer while carving out compassionate early access for those who’ve spent 20 hard years in physical labour. Not a blunt, one-size-fits-all hike, but a genuinely fair adjustment that rewards common sense over political cowardice.
Meanwhile, across the aisle, Winston Peters was busy taking his own shots, this time at National. After campaign chair Simeon Brown cast NZ First and ACT as squabbling children with National playing “mum and dad” referee, Peters fired back in the debating chamber on Tuesday afternoon.
He asked Nicola Willis directly: was it “childish” to want every baby born in New Zealand handed a KiwiSaver account and a Kickstart payment, or had “Mum and Dad” finally come around to NZ First’s way of thinking?
It’s worth noting National’s new KiwiSaver policy lines up rather closely with the plan New Zealand First first put on the table back in May. Imitation, it seems, being the sincerest form of flattery in coalition politics.
Willis gave Peters his moment, conceding: “It’s a great idea, and I hope that future government gets to deliver it.”
Hipkins, apparently uninterested in watching the right side of the aisle take a victory lap, jumped in with a point of order, insisting the whole exchange was about party policy rather than government business.