New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters has today announced a campaign policy that from 2029 only New Zealand citizens will be eligible for New Zealand Superannuation.
In recent years, some commentators have questioned the affordability of NZ Super.
Our NZ Superannuation scheme was designed to look after our seniors in their retirement.
Kiwis who left school sometimes at the age of fifteen or sixteen, worked two, sometimes three jobs, for forty or fifty years of their lives paying taxes - sometimes through the highest tax periods in our country's history.
They deserve to be looked after in their retirement.
With our growing older population and the increasing costs of super on taxpayers, how is it fair that the tax burden of supporting seniors now goes to paying for the full retirement of someone who has migrated to our country and only lived and paid taxes for sometimes less than half of the time compared to those who have worked their whole lives here?
We are a fair society, and we should always strive to maintain that - it is what makes our country unique.
When NZ Super was established in 1977, it was not in the context of the immigration levels we currently have.
Over just the past twenty years, New Zealand has had a total net migration of around 650,000 people into our country, at an average of over 30,000 each year.
That means more people than the population of Christchurch have moved to New Zealand in the past twenty years.
And with that 650,000 migrants that has come with it a percentage tax burden just for NZ Super which is a ticking timebomb.
Under current settings, you don't have to be a New Zealand citizen to gain full access to NZ Super payments.
In fact, you don't even have to be a permanent resident. You only need to have a resident visa.
How have we come to a point of having no value or meaning of being a New Zealand Citizen?
Currently, someone who has lived in New Zealand for just twenty years, and only need to be in the country for five years after the age of fifty, can be eligible for full super payments.
That means they only have to be in New Zealand for one year out of every three after the age of fifty, and they can get the same full amount as someone who has worked their entire life paying taxes since they were fifteen years old.
How is that fair?
As the old saying goes - "generous to a fault".
The annual superannuation bill for older migrants has hit a billion dollars.
In December 2025, the Crown paid $2 million a week to over 42,000 super annuitants who became resident in New Zealand aged 50 or older.
Annually, the total works out at over $1 billion.
That sum has more than doubled in the past 10 years - from $500 million in 2015, to over $1 billion last year.
New Zealand First believes we need to instil some meaning and value back into being a Kiwi, and back into being a New Zealand Citizen.
Today we are announcing a campaign policy that only New Zealand citizens will be eligible for New Zealand Super.
This policy will have a grace period to take effect within the next three years.
If you want to get NZSuper then you need to sign up, be proud enough of New Zealand, and show full commitment to our country and become a citizen - our taxpayers should no longer continue to be used as a bottomless pit by some migrants to our country.
This is about economic fairness, and it is about putting New Zealanders first.
