At the moment, people who have lived in the country for 20 years, or have only been here for five years after turning 50, are eligible for \u201cfull\u201d super payments.<\/p>\n
Peters said that means people can be in New Zealand for a year out of every three after turning 50, and they could get the same amount as someone who has \u201cworked their entire life paying taxes since they were 15 years old\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow is that fair?\u201d<\/p>\n
Winston Peters. Photograph \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n
The superannuation scheme was designed to look after seniors in their retirement, he said: Kiwis who worked two, sometimes three jobs for 50 years and sometimes through the \u201chighest tax periods in our country\u2019s history\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey deserve to be looked after in their retirement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, Peters said, the \u201ctax burden\u201d now fell on paying for the \u201cfull retirement\u201d of someone who migrated here and lived and paid taxes for \u201chalf of the time\u201d compared with those who had worked their whole lives.<\/p>\n
In the last 20 years, New Zealand has had a total net migration of around 650,000 people, at an average of more than 30,000 each year.<\/p>\n
Peters said migrants brought a \u201cpercentage tax burden\u201d for superannuation, which he described as a \u201cticking time bomb\u201d.<\/p>\n
The annual superannuation bill for older migrants has hit a billion dollars.<\/p>\n
In December 2025, the Crown paid $2 million a week to over 42,000 superannuitants who became New Zealand residents aged 50 or older.<\/p>\n
That sum has more than doubled in the past 10 years, from just $500m in 2015 to over $1 billion last year.<\/p>\n
New Zealand First wants to put some meaning and value \u201cback into being a New Zealand citizen\u201d.<\/p>\n
The policy means only New Zealand citizens would be eligible for superannuation payments, with a three-year grace period before it takes effect.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you want to get NZ Super then you need to sign up, be proud enough of New Zealand and show full commitment to our country and become a citizen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur taxpayers should no longer continue to be used as a bottomless pit by some migrants to our country.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the moment, people who have lived in the country for 20 years, or have only been here…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2246,696,136407,22285,146176,5903,84021,1888,71,50371,291427,117,111,43,139,69,2847,1653,7254,1324,314,61,6730,80],"class_list":["post-591697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-2246","tag-announced","tag-blowing","tag-citizens","tag-criteria","tag-election","tag-eligibility","tag-first","tag-from","tag-limit","tag-limiting","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-only","tag-payments","tag-policy","tag-stop","tag-superannuation","tag-to","tag-would","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591697","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=591697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}