{"id":151870,"date":"2025-11-24T22:19:04","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T22:19:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/151870\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T22:19:04","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T22:19:04","slug":"labour-leader-chris-hipkins-labels-raising-superannuation-age-unfair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/151870\/","title":{"rendered":"Labour Leader Chris Hipkins labels raising superannuation age ‘unfair’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Chris<\/p>\n

\nLabour leader Chris Hipkins said raising the superannuation age would be “unfair” on some workers.
\nPhoto: NZ Herald\/Jason Dorday\n<\/p>\n

Labour leader Chris Hipkins says it would be “very, very unfair” on some workers to lift the age of superannuation.<\/p>\n

Business New Zealand has called on both major political parties to agree to gradually lift the age of eligibility for superannuation.<\/p>\n

The group’s Director of Advocacy Catherine Beard told Radio New Zealand that a 65 year threshold is not sustainable.<\/p>\n

In a speech to National Party members in Upper Hutt on Sunday, National leader Christopher Luxon hinted his party would once again campaign on raising the superannuation age<\/a>, but said the party would set out their approach closer to the election.<\/p>\n

But Hipkins told Morning Report that it would significantly impact workers on low incomes, especially those who had undertaken hard physical work.<\/p>\n

“By 65 their bodies are worn out, and then to tell them ‘sorry, we are not going to fund superannuation until a later date,’<\/p>\n

“That would be very, very unfair on them.”<\/p>\n

Hipkins said there were a lot of areas around retirement generally where there was room for political agreement.<\/p>\n

He said it was good to see National focusing on KiwiSaver<\/a> – it announced it wanted to raise default worker and employment contributions over time – even if he believed the plan was “rushed” and left many questions unanswered.<\/p>\n

Hipkins told Morning Report Labour was working on its own KiwiSaver policy and it would be released in time.<\/p>\n

While Labour broadly supported increasing contributions to KiwiSaver, the savings scheme needed a comprehensive plan to iron out issues especially for low income workers<\/p>\n

“If someone on a low income finds a three percent contribution too big a hurdle, then a six percent contribution could be impossible.”<\/p>\n

Labour would also focus on the issue of employers using total remuneration packages, he said.<\/p>\n

That system involves an employee being told a certain amount of money is available to them and they can make their KiwiSaver contributions out of that, or use it as take-home pay.<\/p>\n

It has been highlighted as an issue by the Retirement Commission.<\/p>\n

Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Labour leader Chris Hipkins said raising the superannuation age would be “unfair” on some workers. Photo: NZ Herald\/Jason…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[48,138,47,246,111,43,139,69,244,245,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-151870","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-current-affairs","11":"tag-finance","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-newzealand","15":"tag-nz","16":"tag-personal-finance","17":"tag-personalfinance","18":"tag-podcasts","19":"tag-public-radio","20":"tag-radio-new-zealand","21":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}