Dear John,
At the Party’s Lower North Island Christmas function today, I announced that if National is re-elected next year, we’re going to strengthen the role of KiwiSaver in helping New Zealanders have a more comfortable and secure retirement. More on that in a moment…
Next week is the second anniversary of the coalition Government. Things were a mess when we took office after six years of Labour. You’ll recall that food inflation was staggering, mortgage repayments had skyrocketed, few young people had a hope of buying a first home and the Government was borrowing more and more money to spend on consultants and ideological projects. At the same time, violent crime and welfare dependency were all increasing, while school achievement was plummeting.
We’ve got stuck in to fixing the basics with practical, affordable solutions and I’ve attached here a summary of many of the actions we’ve taken in our first two years. The good news is that we’re seeing results.
By stopping wasteful spending, we helped reduce inflation from 7.3% to 3%. As a result, interest rates have fallen from 5.5% to 2.5%, lowering mortgage repayments and helping Kiwis with the cost of living. That’s on top of the tax relief we delivered in Budget 2024 that benefited households by an average of $1,560 a year.
Since then we have expanded FamilyBoost so even more families get support with early childhood education costs.
We’ve been fixing the basics in education too. We have:
- Banned cellphones in classrooms and 79 per cent of teachers report that students’ focus has improved and 61 per cent say student achievement has improved
- Mandated an hour of reading, an hour of writing and an hour of maths – every single day
- Introduced a structured approach to teaching literacy and numeracy that is delivering results. Already the number of new entrants achieving where they should has gone from 36 per cent to 58 per cent and we’ve only just started.
It’s been the same approach in law and order, where we’ve cracked down on crime by banning gang patches in public, increased Police patrols and ensured there are tougher consequences for crime. To date those policies have delivered an 85% reduction in ram raids and 38,000 fewer victims of violent crime.
Day after day, we’re fixing the basics while building the future.
Building the future means National continuing to work hard to grow the economy to create more jobs and better opportunities for Kiwis. It means maintaining our discipline in government spending to keep inflation and interest rates low, and balancing the books to not burden future generations with more debt. It means delivering the roads, hospitals and classrooms we want, and continuing to increase the housing supply so young people can get on the property ladder.
Now back to where I started…when you think about your future, you’re likely to think about retirement. Today I announced that a National government will gradually increase employees’ and employers’ KiwiSaver contributions to 6 per cent each so that by 2032, 12 per cent of the earnings of each of us will be building a nest egg for a retirement with better choices. It won’t be compulsory to contribute 6 per cent because for some people at certain times of their life, that’s too high. However, the incentive is that if you can manage it, your employer will match you and retirement will look and feel more comfortable. If you’d like to read my speech, it’s here.
Christopher Luxon
Leader of the National Party
