What do opposition parties think of National's KiwiSaver policy?

The prime minister's statements are doing little to hose down opposition claims his KiwiSaver policy is likely linked to a rise in the retirement age.

Unveiled on Sunday, National's first substantive policy for next year's election campaign would see employers required to match workers' KiwiSaver contributions up to 6 percent of their wages.

While opposition parties were somewhat supportive, they raised some caveats.

The links to retirement age could also point to a brewing rift in the coalition.

Coalition partners

New Zealand First's Winston Peters seemed to want the policy to go further.

He did not respond to interview requests, but in a social media post said it was good to see National agreeing with a policy he announced in September which would lift contributions to 10 percent each for employers and employees, and make them compulsory.

"NZ First said back in September we need to increase contributions to more than match Australia, make it compulsory, and have corresponding tax cuts for both individuals and businesses," Peters said.

"As the saying goes...imitation is the most sincere form of flattery."

The other partner, ACT stopped short of backing the policy saying they wanted to see more details.

Leader David Seymour said saving was a worthy goal and the policy would help with that, but it may also mean people putting less money into other investments and savings - including mortgages.

"Will it displace other kinds of saving? For example, will it mean people invest less in their small business, pay down their mortgage slower, or do less investment in other things outside KiwiSaver? Because it's possible that most of the effect will be an effect of displacing other savings.

"We haven't seen the policy in any detail. But the question we would ask before making a decision on supporting it would be, you know, how much other saving will this displace."

Seymour said ACT only agreed to increase KiwiSaver employer and employee contributions to 4 percent in the 2025 Budget because government contributions were also halved.

"It's always been our policy to reduce the government contribution, because the government is currently borrowing every extra dollar and borrowing money to put in people's KiwiSaver so they can invest in the global share market - it's bad economics. So that was our policy, and the increase in private contributions was a trade off for that."

Opposition

Labour's leader Chris Hipkins said increased retirement savings would be a good thing for New Zealanders and KiwiSaver was a "great scheme" introduced by Labour, but he was concerned National "haven't done their homework here".

"They haven't worked out a transition plan, they haven't worked out how to support people on low incomes, and they are the government right now, so they could have worked through all of these details already," he said.

"The fact that they're not doing that suggests that this is just a panicked 'well, we need to announce something, come up with something on the hoof' rather than a considered policy."

He said Labour would announce its own KiwiSaver policy next year.

"I'm certainly not opposed to the level of contribution that they're talking about ... it will also need to be accompanied by support for people on low incomes, those not in the workforce, and some protections as well to make sure that employers can't treat increased KiwiSaver contributions as part of your pay."

Green MP Ricardo Menendez March said such support for those on lower incomes was the priority for the party.

"If the government does not introduce additional measures to address existing inequities for low income people, this policy will not provide cost of living relief for low-income people who right now just simply don't even see themselves having a decent enough retirement by the time they get to 65," he said.

"We're seeing far too many families doing hardship withdrawals and being unable to meet their daily cost of living, so the Greens are calling for a guaranteed minimum income."

Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said the KiwiSaver policy would not work well for Māori.

"We are sadly often the ones that are receiving less income, we have work security issues ... this policy, it assumes that everyone is in a position to be able to not only gradually give more, but that they're coping with today's situation, to be able to save - and that's just not the reality."

She said the policy was an indication that National would again be campaigning on raising the age of eligibility for superannuation.

"What it's doing is signalling to us that there's a whole policy shift and you can no longer rely on superannuation being there for you when you're 65.

"For Māori, we spend more years working and fewer years able to access superannuation because of, obviously, the age difference of when Māori die compared to everyone else so there's an equity gap."

She said the government needed to think about how such a change would affect those going into aged care when it was removing support networks.

Retirement age could become key election battleground

National has previously campaigned on lifting the age from 65 to 67 - with gradual increases starting in 2044.

Christopher Luxon on Monday said the party would set out their approach closer to the election.

He committed to keeping the system universal, but indicated the stronger focus on KiwiSaver was likely to be used to balance out a higher retirement age.

"We're not interested in the Australian model of deep asset testing and means testing, it's important for New Zealanders to understand that it's an entitlement that they will have. But equally we know going forward future generations of Kiwis are going to need to augment that retirement income with bigger, deeper KiwiSavers."

All three opposition parties confirmed they would not increase the age of superannuation eligibility.

New Zealand First has also long vowed to stop any attempts to do so.

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