New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has used the party’s West Auckland campaign launch to unveil two of the most ambitious economic policies of the 2026 election cycle, an automatic KiwiSaver enrolment at birth scheme with a $1000 Crown contribution for every newborn citizen, and a plan to buy back the Bank of New Zealand from Australian ownership and merge it with Kiwibank to create a new state owned National Bank of New Zealand.
Speaking at the Trusts Arena in Henderson on Sunday, Peters told supporters the party would make KiwiSaver compulsory from the day a child is born, with the government depositing $1000 into the new account to give every child a financial head start before they have even left hospital. He framed the policy as a long term wealth building tool aimed at a generation that has grown up watching house prices and rents climb faster than wages.
“Universal birth enrolment will ensure every child begins their financial life as a KiwiSaver member,” Peters said.
The birth enrolment proposal sits on top of NZ First’s existing pledge to make KiwiSaver compulsory across the entire workforce, with combined employer and employee contribution rates eventually rising to 10 percent. Australia’s superannuation guarantee, which is now nudging 12 percent, has been NZ First’s reference point for years, and Peters argued that the gap between the two countries’ retirement savings systems was one of the main reasons Australian workers retired wealthier than their New Zealand counterparts.
The second leg of the announcement is the more politically explosive. Peters confirmed that an NZ First in government would seek to buy BNZ back from its current owner, National Australia Bank, and combine it with the existing state owned Kiwibank to form a new institution called the National Bank of New Zealand. He said the merged bank would be commercially run rather than directed by ministers, but would have the scale and the balance sheet to push back against the four Australian owned banks that currently control about 85 percent of the New Zealand banking system.
Peters told the audience that the big four had extracted billions of dollars in profits from New Zealand customers each year and that a credible, locally owned challenger was the only realistic way to bring those margins down. He said the buyback and merger would be funded through a combination of sovereign banking bonds, Crown debt, capital from the NZ Super Fund and ACC, and Kiwibank’s existing capital base, with no requirement to raise income tax or GST to pay for it.
“This is not nationalisation, this is taking back our country,” Peters told supporters.
Critics will inevitably point out that the price tag is enormous. BNZ is one of New Zealand’s most profitable banks, and any takeover would require National Australia Bank to be a willing seller at a price the Crown could justify. Forced acquisition is not part of the announced policy, which leans instead on a negotiated purchase backed by Crown borrowing. Even so, the proposal is the first time in a generation that a sitting coalition partner has openly campaigned on bringing a major trading bank back into public ownership, and it puts pressure on both National and Labour to say whether they would consider any version of the same idea.
The KiwiSaver from birth policy is on more familiar ground. A version of it was floated by the previous Labour government during the Cullen era, was partially implemented through the original $1000 kickstart payment, and was then scrapped by National in 2015 as a fiscal saving. NZ First’s revived version is more generous than the original because the $1000 would arrive automatically at birth rather than waiting for first deposit, and because it sits inside a wider plan to lift contribution rates over time.
Much of the rest of Peters’ speech leaned on themes the party has campaigned on for years. He restated NZ First’s opposition to any changes to NZ Super, ruling out means testing, a higher age of eligibility or a longer residency test. He attacked what he called globalist policies, criticised the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, repeated the party’s opposition to the Paris climate accord, and warned that NZ First would oppose any further references to Treaty principles in legislation. He also reaffirmed opposition to selling Kiwibank or Air New Zealand, a position that fits awkwardly with ACT’s openness to partial asset sales but which Peters argued was the only credible base for the new bank policy.
The event doubled as a candidate launch. Former National MP and minister Alfred Ngaro, who held the Te AtatΕ« and Botany seats during the John Key and Bill English years, was announced as NZ First’s candidate for the new Glendene electorate. Sitting NZ First MP David Wilson will contest neighbouring Henderson. Both seats sit in the West Auckland heartland that has historically swung between Labour and National, and which Peters clearly sees as winnable for a populist party with a strong economic offer.
For voters trying to weigh the policy against the rest of the field, NEWS WIRE’s 2026 voting tool lets you compare each party’s published positions on superannuation, banking, KiwiSaver and asset ownership side by side.
What do you think of NZ First’s bid to put $1000 into every newborn’s KiwiSaver account and to merge BNZ with Kiwibank into a new state owned National Bank of New Zealand. Is this the boldest economic policy of the campaign so far, or a return to the kind of large scale public ownership that was supposed to have been settled decades ago. Drop your view in the comments.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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