The ACT Party would freeze the adult minimum wage at $23.95 an hour for three years and let employers pay workers under 20 a new training wage of 60 percent of that rate, the party announced on Tuesday 15 September.
The two wage measures lead a six-point small business package. The rest would allow protected exit negotiations between employers and staff, shorten the time limit for taking a personal grievance to the Employment Relations Authority, end compulsory employer collection of union fees and change how software is treated for tax, according to ACT’s policy document.
“Laws designed to improve pay and conditions haven’t done the job. Truly higher wages require businesses that can grow,” ACT small business spokesperson Laura McClure said in a statement released by the party.
The adult minimum wage rose from $23.50 to $23.95 an hour on 1 April 2026, and the starting-out and training minimum wages rose from $18.80 to $19.16, according to Employment New Zealand. Those two lower rates are set at 80 percent of the adult rate and apply only to certain young workers and trainees.
At today’s adult rate, ACT’s training wage would be $14.37 an hour. Compared with the current $19.16 starting-out rate, that is $4.79 an hour less, or $191.60 less over a 40-hour week before tax. For an under-20 who would otherwise be on the full adult rate, the gap is $9.58 an hour.
ACT’s document says the training wage would apply to workers aged under 20 for the first 12 months they work for a particular employer, would replace the existing starting-out wage criteria for those workers, and that ordinary employment protections would continue to apply. “Government should be helping young New Zealanders onto the employment ladder, not pulling the first rung out of reach,” the ACT document says.
Party leader David Seymour was asked by reporters at Tākina, Wellington’s convention centre, whether the policy would reduce the number of young people not in employment, education or training, interest.co.nz reported. “There is no question. If you create another opportunity for people who are not in employment, education and training to work, more people will work,” Seymour said. He added that it was “impossible to know” how many employers would take it up.
Teenagers are having a hard time finding work. Stats NZ figures for the June 2026 quarter, released in August, showed the unemployment rate for 15 to 19-year-olds rose to 25.3 percent from 23.0 percent a year earlier, with 43,400 people in that age group unemployed, interest.co.nz reported at the time. Overall unemployment was 5.6 percent.
On the freeze, ACT argues that when the cost of employing someone rises faster than productivity, “that cost has to show up somewhere” in higher prices, fewer hours or less hiring. A three-year freeze would give productivity and market wages time to catch up, the document says, adding that “Employers would remain free to pay more, as many already do.”
This is not a new idea for ACT. The party campaigned on a minimum wage freeze in 2020 and again in 2023. Seymour said increases under ACT’s Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden had been much smaller than under the previous government. “Last time it got us minimal increases, this time I suspect it might get us zero increases,” he said.
The record bears out the first part. The adult rate was $22.70 before the coalition’s first review. It rose 2 percent to $23.15 in April 2024 and 1.5 percent to $23.50 in April 2025, RNZ reported in December 2024, when van Velden said the rise met the coalition’s commitment to moderate increases each year. The 45-cent rise this April took the total to $1.25 an hour, or 5.5 percent over three years.
A freeze would hold the rate still while prices move. As an illustration, if prices rose 2 percent a year for three years, $23.95 at the end of the freeze would buy roughly what $22.57 buys today.
Seymour rejected the argument that the freeze would hurt people struggling with the cost of living. “There’s no question that we have a challenge with the cost of living but people on minimum wage are not the people you think they are,” he said. He said fewer than 10 percent of minimum wage workers were heads of household, and that those who were received tax credits. “If I wanted to help the most hard-up New Zealanders, based on the numbers, the last thing I would do is increase the minimum wage,” Seymour said.
Labour tied the policy to National the same morning. Campaign chair Kieran McAnulty said a National-led government with ACT at the table would freeze wages and take under-20s backwards. “People who get up every morning and go to work should not be told they have to accept falling living standards while their costs keep rising,” McAnulty said in a Labour statement.
The package’s other employment changes are more technical. Under current law, ACT’s document says, a worker generally has 90 days to raise a personal grievance but can then take up to three years to bring it to the Employment Relations Authority. ACT would keep the 90 days to raise a grievance and give the worker a further 90 days to take it to the Authority, which the two sides could extend by written agreement. The separate three-year window for sexual harassment grievances would stay.
On union fees, employers can currently be required to deduct them from wages and pass the money on. ACT would make that voluntary, leaving unions to collect fees directly from members unless an employer agrees to keep doing it. The protected exit talks would let an employer invite a worker to discuss leaving by agreement, including an offer of compensation, without those talks generally being admissible in later proceedings. The worker would be under no obligation to take part.
Whether any of it happens depends on coalition talks after the election. ACT’s 2023 freeze did not survive them, and the minimum wage has risen every year since.
To see how ACT’s employment and wage policies compare with the other parties, try the Newswire voting tool.
Would a three-year freeze and a $14.37 training wage help young people into their first jobs, or leave the lowest paid further behind? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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