The KiwiSaver Generation
New Zealand First is going to make KiwiSaver enrolment compulsory at birth and there will be an automatic immediate Crown contribution of $1000 for New Zealand citizens only.
This is a once-per-lifetime investment that compounds for decades.
This will be the start of the nest egg for something that we will call the "KiwiSaver Generation".
Universal birth enrolment will ensure every child begins their financial life as a KiwiSaver member, with a meaningful balance already growing on their behalf.
This new policy will work in conjunction with our existing campaign policy of compulsory KiwiSaver enrolment for the wider workforce and increasing employee and employer contributions to 8% initially and eventually to 10%.
If the direction of travel is a New Zealand where participation is the default rather than the exception, birth enrolment is the logical starting point.
Establishing membership from day one, normalising savings as a lifelong habit, and ensuring no New Zealander enters adulthood without a savings foundation already in place. This policy removes the enrolment gap entirely for the next generation.
Buying Back BNZ
We have a second campaign policy announcement today.
New Zealand will be buying back the BNZ bank.
Four Australian owned banks control around 85 percent of the system. They lend our deposits back to us at margins that are materially higher than those earned by their parent groups in Australia. Billions of dollars of profits a year that flow across the Tasman.
New Zealand First will be proposing a buy-back of the Bank of New Zealand from National Australia Bank.
It will be merged with Kiwibank to form the "National Bank of New Zealand (NBNZ)" - a fully Crown owned, commercially run, systemically significant domestic bank with the scale to genuinely compete with ANZ, ASB and Westpac. After all, when National sold BNZ to NAB in November 1992, it then had six of every ten New Zealand banking customers.
This is a buy-back to put a New Zealand owned competitor on the field at the scale required to change the behaviour of the foreign-owned banks.
This will create real competitive pressure on the Australian owned banks - a domestically owned strategic lender capable of supporting agriculture, infrastructure, and Small to Medium Enterprises growth on long-horizon terms.
Kiwibank, the only domestically owned bank of any scale, currently holds just under 8 percent of the mortgage market.
The 'Commerce Commission 2024 Personal Banking' market study, showed a structurally uncompetitive market in which the major banks face no sustained pressure to compete on price, no realistic threat of new entry at scale, and no domestic ownership accountability.
Kiwibank was created in 2002 precisely to provide a domestic challenger. But after two decades it remains a marginal player.
Successive governments have starved it of the capital it would need to be a genuine system-shaping competitor.
The "National Bank of New Zealand" would not be a government department. It would be a fully commercial bank with a Crown shareholder, but run on new management structure which we will outline in upcoming campaign announcements.
The "National Bank of New Zealand" would exist to keep the major Australian banks honest and to keep New Zealand banking profits in New Zealand.
The buy-back of the BNZ would not be funded from the operating budget.
A blended funding stack would include:
- A New Zealand Sovereign Banking Bond issuance, marketed to domestic retail and KiwiSaver investors as a direct economic-sovereignty instrument.
- Long-dated Crown debt at current sovereign rates. BNZ currently generates more than $1.5 billion in annual cash earnings - comfortably servicing the debt and returning a surplus to the Crown.
- A limited tranche of the NZ Future Fund and ACC investment, structured as a commercial equity at arm's length and a market rate of return.
- Retention of Kiwibank's existing capital base.
The buy-back is self-financing in expectation. The fiscal impact is a one-off balance-sheet expansion, not an ongoing cost.
This is not nationalisation - this is taking back our country.
Crown-owned commercial banks operating at scale are not radical. They are normal in serious economies - Singapore, Norway, Germany, Canada, France, all have large-scale state-owned banks that have serious stakes in the market.
New Zealand is the outlier - and we are going to change that.
New Zealand built BNZ. Labour and National sold it. Now we are going to buy it back.
Every dollar of profit it makes will stay in this country, working for New Zealanders.
That is what economic sovereignty looks like. That is what real conservatism looks like. That is what real Nationalism looks like.
And that's what 'added-value' looks like for our country.
New Zealand First has been working hard over the past two and a half years to ensure we have the polices and the plan ready to lead this country in the right direction.
