National drops Super age date, leaving ACT and NZ First on opposite sides

National's fiscal plan, released on Monday 12 October, gives no date for raising the eligibility age for NZ Super. National instead promises cross-party talks on the retirement system within the first 100 days of a new term.

That leaves National between its two likely coalition partners. ACT's fiscal plan, released a day earlier on 11 October, would lift the age to 67 by 2035. The NZ Herald has described NZ First as "dead set against" reducing the cost of Super, and ACT as the only party apart from National that backs reducing it.

NZ First leader Winston Peters dismissed both plans. "They don't have a fiscal plan, nor does ACT, it's pretence now," he said.

ACT leader David Seymour said National was pushing the hard call on superannuation into the future. "But the reason we need an ACT party is to take these hard positions when nobody else will," he said.

In May, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said he would go to the election with a policy on lifting the retirement age "for sure", the Herald reported. Before the 2023 election, National campaigned on gradually lifting the age from 2044.

On Monday Luxon gave his reason for leaving the date out. "It requires a political consensus, and we don't have that currently," he said, NEWS WIRE reported.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis said she stood by every single one of her previous comments on the cost of the pension. "I'm inviting other political parties to come to the table," Willis said on Monday. She and Labour's Barbara Edmonds had agreed on Sunday to hold talks on retirement and aged care.

National's language had already softened before the plan came out. When Treasury released its pre-election fiscal update, Willis would not put a date on when she wanted the age to rise, the Herald reported. She said only that change was needed "at some point".

"We will announce our superannuation policy, but ... I am humble about the fact that this is something that requires enduring change, and therefore wider support across the parliament," Willis said then.

According to the Herald, Treasury expects the cost of Super to rise by an average of $1.6 billion a year over the next four years, reaching $32.9b by 2030/31. Over that period, 120,000 more people are expected to start receiving Super, taking the total past one million in 2027/28. Treasury secretary Iain Rennie said that by 2030/31, Super and the interest the Government pays on its debt would together take up 28 per cent of the total tax take.

Most voters polled want the age left alone. An RNZ Reid Research poll in July found 58 per cent of respondents wanted the eligibility age to stay at 65, NEWS WIRE reported.

This report draws on a NEWS WIRE article that says it was written by AI.