Every Party's KiwiSaver Policy for the 2026 Election, Compared

So that is the full field. For the first time in a long while, both major parties are campaigning on how much money goes into your account rather than on the edges of the scheme. The gap between them is not where most people assume it is, either.

I have had more questions about KiwiSaver policy in the last three months than in the previous three years. So here is the whole thing in two tables, with a source for every number.

One thing before we start. I am a KiwiSaver adviser, not a political commentator. I am not going to tell you how to vote, and you should be wary of any adviser who does. What I can do is tell you what each policy would actually do to your balance and your pay packet, which is the part most of the coverage skips.

First, the rules you are actually living under

Worth getting the starting line straight, because a lot of the coverage blurs the promises into the present tense. These are in force today and do not depend on the election:

• You contribute a minimum of 3.5% of your before-tax pay. You can choose 4%, 6%, 8% or 10% instead.
• Your employer must put in at least 3.5% of your before-tax pay. That is a floor, not a match. It does not go up because you contribute more, so if you move to 10% your employer still only has to do 3.5%.
• Both rise to 4% on 1 April 2028. Already law, already scheduled.
• The government adds 25 cents per dollar you put in, up to $260.72 a year, if you are 16 to 65 and earning $180,000 or less.
• You can apply to Inland Revenue for a temporary reduction back to 3% if you need the cashflow.

If some of that is news, you are in good company, and I wrote it up in more detail in what changed for KiwiSaver on 1 April 2026.

Every party's KiwiSaver policy, side by side

Scroll the table sideways to see every column.

The headline everyone reaches for is that National wants 12% and Labour wants 6%. That is not really the story. Both want the employer at 6%. The difference is what they ask of you: National makes your 6% compulsory, and Labour makes your side optional while guaranteeing the employer's. Same destination for your employer, opposite philosophies about you.

The two details that decide how this lands on you

The contribution rates will get the headlines. These two get almost none, and between them they decide whether any of the above reaches your account or just moves money around your payslip.

Scroll the table sideways to see every column.

National: compulsory, and 12% by 2032

Everyone in work would have to be in KiwiSaver, or an approved equivalent, from July 2028. The default rate climbs until employers and employees are each putting in 6% by 2032, for a combined 12%. That is the number Australia has reached, and it is clearly the benchmark they are aiming at.

People already in an alternative scheme, the Police scheme being the usual example, would be exempt. Suspending your contributions would require meeting the existing hardship test, which is the same test used for hardship withdrawals. That is a real tightening. Today's savings suspension is considerably easier to get than that.

On top of the rates: every baby born from 1 July 2027 automatically enrolled with a $1,500 "Baby Boost", and a government contribution for parents on paid parental leave from the same date.

The honest summary: the most money into accounts, and the least say over it.

Labour: your employer pays, whatever you do

Labour has come at the same problem from the other end. Instead of compelling you, it compels your employer.

From 1 July 2028 the employer contribution becomes compulsory and gets paid even if you reduce or pause your own. The employer minimum then climbs to 6% by 2032. Your own default sits at 4%, which is the rise already scheduled, but the minimum disappears entirely, so you could drop your own contribution without losing your employer's.

Three smaller pieces matter more than they sound, because they fix things I see in real client files:

• Working past 65. Employer contributions would extend to workers over 65. At the moment your employer stops having to contribute the day you turn 65, and I have sat across from plenty of people still working who had no idea their employer contributions had quietly stopped.
• Paid parental leave. Employer contributions would keep running through it. Time out of the workforce raising children is one of the biggest single reasons two people on identical salaries retire with very different balances.
• Total remuneration. A ban on new contracts that bury the employer contribution inside your salary. More on that below, because it is the one I would most like people to understand.

NZ First: compulsory from birth, at a combined 10%

NZ First actually got there first, back in May. Compulsory membership, with 5% from you and 5% from your employer for a combined 10%. Winston Peters has paired it with tax relief for members and employers to take the sting out, and newborn citizens would be enrolled at birth with a one-off $1,000 Crown contribution.

Note where that lands. A combined 10% is more than today's 7%, but it is less than the 12% both National and TOP are proposing, so despite being the loudest on compulsion NZ First is not the biggest number on the page. It is also the policy where the published detail is thinnest, so I would read it as a direction of travel rather than a timetable.

ACT: the only party saying no

ACT is the one party in Parliament still opposed to compulsion, and the argument is a cashflow one that I do not think is silly: 12% of your income locked away is 12% you cannot put on the mortgage or into your own business. David Seymour has said he is open to the parental side of National's package, wants more scrutiny of the move to 12%, and would go looking for exemptions in any coalition negotiation. ACT has not released a KiwiSaver policy of its own.

The Opportunities Party: a second scheme alongside the first

TOP does not hold a seat, so it will not be writing any of this into law on its own. I am including it because it is the only party proposing to change the shape of the scheme rather than the size of the contributions, and those ideas have a habit of turning up in other parties' policies a few years later.

The proposal is "KiwiSaver 2.0", a separate scheme running alongside the current one. Contributions of 6% from you and 6% from your employer, phased in over eight years, and exempt from income tax. You could shift your existing KiwiSaver balance across if you wanted to, or leave it where it is.

The trade-off is the part to read twice. You could not withdraw from KiwiSaver 2.0 for hardship or for a first home. You could borrow against the balance instead. That is a genuinely different philosophy: it treats the money as retirement savings that stay put, rather than a pot you can open early under defined circumstances. Whether that appeals depends entirely on whether you were counting on KiwiSaver for a deposit.

It sits inside TOP's wider tax package alongside a land value tax and a citizen's income, so it is not really separable from the rest of the platform.

The Greens and Te Pāti Māori

Neither has released a standalone KiwiSaver policy as I write this, so I am not going to invent one for them. The Greens have historically campaigned on what KiwiSaver funds are allowed to invest in rather than on contribution rates. Te Pāti Māori has argued for earlier access to retirement savings and NZ Super for Māori on the basis of a lower average life expectancy, and has raised affordability concerns about compulsory minimums. If either publishes something before 7 November I will update this page.

Total remuneration: the quiet one that matters most

A total remuneration contract is one where your stated salary already includes your employer's KiwiSaver contribution. You are told you earn $100,000, and the employer's contribution comes out of that $100,000 rather than sitting on top of it. You fund both halves.

The clearest way to see the cost is two people who have both been told they earn $100,000.

On a standard contract the salary is $100,000, the employer's 3.5% sits on top, and employing you costs them $103,500. You take home $73,622 and $5,845 lands in your KiwiSaver.

On total remuneration the employer's 3.5% comes out of the $100,000, so the salary is really $96,618. You take home $71,475 and $5,647 lands in your KiwiSaver. Same headline number, but you are $2,147 worse off in the hand and $198 worse off in your KiwiSaver, and your employer is $3,500 better off. (Both KiwiSaver figures are after ESCT, the tax that comes off the employer's contribution before it reaches your account.)

That is the number to carry into your next pay review. Two offers quoting the same salary are not the same offer, and almost nobody is told which one they are being handed.

There is a second problem, and it is the one the politicians are aiming at. Because the pot is fixed, stopping your contributions puts money straight back in your pocket: roughly 7% more in the hand today, and around 12% if the combined rate gets there. A system that pays you to stop saving for retirement is a strange thing to leave in place.

Labour would ban new total remuneration contracts that work this way. Existing ones were not addressed in the announcement, which is a gap worth watching.

National did not include it, but has said it is open to considering an end to the practice and has signalled consultation with employers and employees about what its changes mean for existing agreements. That is an open question, not a commitment, and I am not going to write it up as more than it is.

Nobody else has published a position at all.

Regardless of what happens in November, go and read your own employment agreement this week. You are looking for the words "total remuneration", or a salary described as inclusive of KiwiSaver employer contributions. If it is in there, you are paying both sides, and you want to know that before your next pay review rather than after it.

Self-employed? This is no longer a spectator sport

National's policy would compel you. From 1 July 2028 a self-employed person would have to contribute 4% of their income, rising to 6% by 2032. That is the employee rate on its own, not the combined rate, because there is no employer contribution alongside it. Christopher Luxon has described that treatment of the self-employed as fair and reasonable.

The criticism, and my view is that it has real force, is that this is all stick and no carrot. An employee moving to 6% has an employer putting in 6% alongside them. A sole trader moving to 6% gets nothing beyond the same government contribution they could already claim. You would carry a new compulsory cost, with no matching benefit, on income that is often lumpy, while also managing provisional tax. If you run your own business that is a cashflow question worth modelling in 2027, not in the month it starts.

Labour would not compel you. It has said it would explore more flexible options for the self-employed, which is honest as far as it goes but is not yet a policy. There is nothing to assess until they put some detail on it.

NZ First would make membership compulsory but has not said how contributions would work for someone without an employer. ACT opposes compulsion, so nothing would be asked of you. The Greens and Te Pāti Māori have not published a position.

For context, research by Hnry and the Retirement Commission found roughly 46% of sole traders had contributed to KiwiSaver in the year surveyed or planned to, against about 78% of employees. The gap these policies are aimed at is real enough. Whether compulsion without a matching contribution is the way to close it is the actual argument.

Either way, none of the mechanics have changed yet, and there is money sitting on the table right now that most of my self-employed clients are not claiming in full. I have written up how it works in how to pay KiwiSaver if you are self-employed, and there is more on the KiwiSaver for self-employed page.

What this actually means for you

Five things, in the order I would think about them.

1. Nothing changes on Monday. These are promises. The election is 7 November, legislation takes months after that, and most of the start dates are 2027 or 2028. Do not restructure anything today on the strength of a press conference.

2. The direction of travel is remarkably consistent. Four of the seven parties want more money going into KiwiSaver accounts. Whatever the result, the odds are your contributions and your employer's are heading up over the next six years. Planning on that basis is sensible. Planning on any one party's exact numbers is not.

3. The real fight is over your side, not the employer's. Both major parties agree the employer should reach 6%. They disagree entirely about whether you should be made to match it. If you are someone who has paused contributions, those two policies land on your balance very differently.

4. Go and check your employment agreement for total remuneration wording. This week, regardless of the election. It is the single most common thing I find that people did not know about their own pay.

5. If you are self-employed, do not assume this passes you by. It used to. Under National's policy it would not, and a compulsory 4% of income from 2028 with no employer contribution alongside it is a cashflow change worth seeing coming.

My honest take

Policy is the part of KiwiSaver you have the least control over, and it is unfortunately the part people spend the most energy worrying about.

The parts you can control are your fund type, your fund provider and your contribution rate. For most people I sit down with, getting those three right moves the final number more than the difference between any two policies on this page. A policy debate is about 2032. Your fund choice is about this afternoon.

So read the table, and vote on it if it matters to you. Then go and check your own settings, because that is the part that is actually in your hands.

If you want a second set of eyes, sessions with me are free and there is no obligation to act on anything. If you do implement a recommendation, how I am paid depends on the provider, and that is all set out in the disclosure statement.

Simple Steps. Solid Results.

Sources and further reading

Campaign announcements get revised, and a party's own material always beats my summary of it. These are the places to check:

• Labour Party policies - the KiwiSaver policy released on 13 September 2026, including the compulsory employer contribution, the 6% by 2032 path, the 4% employee default and the total remuneration ban.
• National Party - Enhancing KiwiSaver for Everyone - compulsory KiwiSaver from July 2028, the path to a combined 12% by 2032, the $1,500 Baby Boost and the paid parental leave contribution.
• New Zealand First - compulsory membership, the combined 10% contribution rate and the $1,000 contribution at birth, announced in May 2026.
• ACT New Zealand - ACT's position on compulsion.
• The Opportunities Party - policy - the "KiwiSaver 2.0" proposal, including the 6% plus 6% contributions, the eight-year phase-in, the tax treatment and the withdrawal rules.
• Green Party policy and Te Pāti Māori - check both for anything released after this article was published.
• interest.co.nz - National's treatment of the self-employed, including the 4% from 1 July 2028 rising to 6% by 2032, and Christopher Luxon's defence of it.
• Newsroom - "all stick and no carrot" for the self-employed - the criticism of compulsion without a matching employer contribution, and the sole trader participation figures.
• RNZ - National open to considering an end to total remuneration pay and interest.co.nz on the signalled consultation - the basis for describing National's position as open rather than committed.
• Inland Revenue - KiwiSaver - the rules that actually apply today, including the 3.5% minimum, the 2028 increase and the government contribution.
• Vote NZ - election day is Saturday 7 November 2026, voting opens 26 October and enrolment closes 25 October.
• Model what a higher contribution rate would do to your own balance with my free KiwiSaver calculator.