Andrew Bayly is leaving Parliament at this year’s election, and he is using the last of his time there to reopen the argument New Zealand politicians have spent three decades stepping around.
The outgoing National MP told RNZ on Friday that the age of eligibility for New Zealand Superannuation should start rising by one month every year from 2029, reaching 68 by 2065. He also wants the payment itself to grow more slowly, indexed to general inflation rather than wages, and he wants a limited early access option at a reduced rate for people in poor health, people with shorter life expectancies and people in physically demanding work.
The proposals come from a research paper published last month in the International Review of Public Administration, which Bayly co-authored with economist Leonard Hong and data analyst Emmanuel Jo. He told RNZ he had deliberately published in Asia to make clear he was not speaking for National, but setting out his own “considered view based on economic and demographic modelling”. He said he had sent the paper to every party leader in Parliament, arguing there was a “burning economic imperative” to act.
“This is the biggest economic issue facing New Zealand,” Bayly said. “The cost of superannuation is growing exponentially, and we can’t just keep pushing it out for another day.”
“This is a freight train coming down the line,” he said. “What we’re advocating is a graduated approach now, rather than something being done in the middle of a crisis… we will have to be brutal if we delay it.”
The Treasury numbers behind that language are not in dispute, and they are more striking than the debate usually allows. The core Crown expense tables released with the Budget in May put the cost of New Zealand Superannuation at $24.7 billion in the year to June 2026, rising to $26.5 billion this financial year and $31.2 billion by 2029/30. In 2020/21 the bill was $16.6 billion. On Treasury’s own forecasts the cost of the pension nearly doubles inside a single decade.
Two comparisons in the same tables put that in proportion. New Zealand Superannuation already costs more than the entire education budget, which Treasury forecast at $21.5 billion for the year to June 2026 covering every early childhood centre, school and tertiary institution in the country. It is also roughly five times what the country spends on Jobseeker Support, the benefit that attracts most of the political heat.
The other number worth watching is the headcount. Treasury forecasts 959,000 people receiving New Zealand Superannuation in the year to June 2026, 991,000 the following year and 1,024,000 in the year to June 2028. On those figures the country crosses one million superannuitants during the term of the government elected this year. In 2020/21 there were 825,000.
By 2029/30, on Treasury’s forecasts, New Zealand Superannuation alone accounts for 58 percent of all welfare benefit spending, up from 53 percent this year. Bayly and his co-authors take the arithmetic further out, estimating that under current settings the pension would swallow almost 30 cents of every dollar of government tax revenue by 2065, up from about 19 cents now, and that super, health and education together would take close to 80 percent of the tax take.
None of this is new information to the parties, which is part of Bayly’s point. National campaigned in 2023 on lifting the age to 67, but the start date has been pushed back from 2037 to 2044, which spares everyone born before 1979. Bayly called that plan “worthwhile but insufficient”, saying it would bring super’s share of tax revenue down to 26.5 percent by 2065 while starting in 2029 would get it to about 25 percent. His paper argued the gradual approach “provides successive cohorts with greater certainty for retirement planning”.
National has not yet released its superannuation policy for this election. Labour, the Greens and New Zealand First all support keeping the age at 65, and Winston Peters restated his party’s opposition to any change last week. ACT campaigned in 2023 on moving to 67 far faster, at three months a year starting almost immediately. In May, finance minister Nicola Willis said parties ignoring the rising cost were robbing young people for “their own political expediency”.
Voters, so far, are unmoved. An RNZ-Reid Research poll in July found 58 percent wanted the age left at 65 and 35.3 percent supported a rise to 67. Means testing drew more support, at 46.6 percent in favour and 40.7 percent opposed, though Bayly’s paper discounted that route, arguing it would be “exceedingly difficult” to build cross party support for “such a radical change”.
Bayly is also not the only one making the case this week. On Wednesday, Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand released modelling by NZIER suggesting a different lever. Rather than lifting the age, it would let people voluntarily delay taking the pension in exchange for a higher rate for life. CA ANZ New Zealand country head Peter Vial said nearly all the organisation’s members surveyed were worried about affordability.
“The debate is too often reduced to a single question about raising the age,” Vial said. “But our modelling shows that simply raising eligibility to 67, or later, does not substantially reduce the long-term cost of NZ Super – it just shifts the impact further out.”
CA ANZ tax and financial services leader John Cuthbertson said flexible uptake was not a complete answer on its own. “A flexible uptake is not a complete policy fix, but it broadens the conversation beyond simply increasing the age or introducing means testing,” he said, adding it would need to sit alongside inflation indexing and stronger incentives to save privately.
The two proposals disagree about the mechanism but agree on the diagnosis, and both land in the same awkward spot. Every option on the table costs somebody something, and the people most affected by a later age are decades away from voting on it while the people currently receiving New Zealand Superannuation turn out in large numbers. That asymmetry is the reason the start date keeps moving. It is also why an MP with nothing left to lose is the one saying it out loud.
Newswire has previously covered Treasury modelling that put the eligibility age at 72 by 2065 just to hold the cost of the pension steady as a share of the economy.
You can compare where every party stands on superannuation and the rest of their platforms with our 2026 voting tool.
What do you think, should the super age start moving in 2029, stay at 65, or change in some other way altogether? Leave a comment below and tell us how you see it.
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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