Kiwisaver hardship values double from 2023
There were 10,000 more hardship Kiwisaver withdrawals in 2025 than 2024, but it’s the money value that reveals the true extent of our crisis.
Compared to 2023, the value of the hardship withdrawals is practically double - standing at ~$515 million (versus $264 million in 2023).
Experts see the trend continuing to increase.
And poverty, including child poverty, is flat and/or rising despite National quietly shrinking the target in 2024, and now revealing a “new methodology” for this year.
The Child Poverty Action Group has signaled concerns with the latest shift, stating: “Good data is … a key accountability tool: it allows the public to see whether governments are meeting the targets they have set for reducing child poverty, including the goal of halving it by 2028.”
Also worth mentioning that almost as soon as they formed government, National ignored official advice its initial policies would push tens of thousands more children under the poverty line.
All the data, whether it’s homelessness, Kiwisaver hardship, unemployment, poverty, reveals a country where the gap between haves and have-nots is increasingly stark.
And whereas we heard National Party pundits such as Janet Wilson ask vehemently “Where’s the outrage about our child poverty targets” under an Ardern government, which did make improvements and tried to address root causes, we no longer see the same framing today in the corporate led media.
In Budget 2025, National also halved Kiwisaver government contributions, meaning it has dropped from 50 cents to 25 cents for each dollar you contribute to KiwiSaver each year, dropping the maximum government contribution from $521.43 to $260.72.
i.e. more punitive financial impacts on Kiwis by stealth
EU signs “Mother of All Deals with India, but what’s the key difference with NZ?
The EU has signed a trade deal with India, hailed as the “Mother of All Deals”.
The deal was reportedly accelerated due to uncertainties around the Trump Administration/US and as India grapples with 50% tariffs there. The EU-India agreement eliminates and cuts tariffs on on 96.6% of traded goods from the EU, and would lead to savings of €4bn (NZ$8bn) in duties for European companies.
Ardern’s EU-NZ deal was reportedly worth $2bn a year but Luxon’s India deal has no associated value at this point, but is expected to be a winner for key industries.
One major difference between the EU and NZ Indian deal though, is the EU removed the Indian worker visa negotiation to a separate track. i.e. It did not give in.
The UK also refused India’s demands for more skilled professionals to be able to enter European nations on six-month visas.
Luxon however agreed to accept a fairly large proportion of skilled Indian work visas - coming to about 17% based on current numbers, as well as open NZ to skillsets such as yoga and Indian cookery.
The EU deal also does not appear to contain the same fish hooks as NZ’s which allows the Indian government to claw back benefits if NZ does not follow through on the promised $34 billion investment.
James Cameron cites NZ as “sane” and science driven, praising it’s Covid-19 response as exceptional
James Cameron says his citizenship in NZ is “imminent”, citing sanity and the country’s Covid-19 management as core reasons for his move.
Cameron:
“New Zealand had eliminated the virus completely. They actually eliminated the virus twice. The third time, when it showed up in a mutated form, it broke through. But fortunately, they already had a 98% vaccination rate.”
“This is why I love New Zealand. People there are, for the most part, sane – as opposed to the United States, where you had a 62% vaccination rate, and that’s going down, going the wrong direction.
“Where would you rather live? A place that actually believes in science and is sane and where people can work together cohesively to a common goal, or a place where everybody’s at each other’s throats, extremely polarised, turning its back on science and basically would be in utter disarray if another pandemic appears.”
Last year Elon Musk went on Fox News to warn Americans that fleeing to New Zealand wouldn’t help - signalling how many wealthy Americans including Trump supporters, want to come here.
It’s well known that NZ has been sold as a “bolt hole” for wealthy foreigners fleeing uncertainty, with billionaires such as Peter Thiel (the man reportedly behind US Vice President JD Vance) already taking up partial residence and naming his US government surveillance technology after Lord of the Rings names e.g.. Palantir.
The Coalition government has also significantly weakened the Overseas Investment Act, and removed key conditions like “national interest” from foreign investment decisions, as well as directing officials to do “less verification” and accept documents on face value.
NZ First also agreed to repeal the country’s foreign buyers plan, ensuring easy access for the wealthy.
Matt Doocey, the Mental Health Minister overseeing a Mental Health crisis is focused on the right things
Social Media Watch
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Thanks MT, great work. I cannot wrap my head around what drives Nicola Willis. Why does someone so privileged deny basic decency to her fellow Kiwis? Imagine being pig-headed and arrogant enough, cruel enough, and mean enough, to argue that $7 extra per week is ‘meaningful’. A medium size cup of coffee in Christchurch costs $6.80. The one sentence from Willis - in the interview clip - communicates everything you need to know about her and the current government. And let’s be honest, John Campbell caught her inside her own lie. Willis has an adversarial, confrontational, and combative style when interacting. According to psychologists, this type of behaviour can signal a defensive mechanism and typically indicates that a person feels insecure, threatened or has an underlying, urgent need for control and validation.
Frankly, and I know this is controversial, but Willis is beginning to remind me of Kristi Noem, who is also always combative under scrutiny, whilst being completely divorced from reality (facts and evidence) as well as being caught up in perpetual cosplaying. Another insecurity ‘tell’. I’m sorry, but apart from killing puppies and people and being a lover of Botox, Nicola Willis demonstrates the exact same disdain for evidence and facts and the identical tendency to tell bald-face lies while giving one hundred percent effort to defending the indefensible.
The debacles Willis defends: Ferries, borrowing - particularly for tax cuts, pay equity, ruling out buying climate credits whilst saying and I quote, “Meeting the Paris target would be 'a performative awards ceremony”, yep she actually said that. Willis was caught lying when she said the doctor's union turned down a 9.5% pay rise. Meanwhile she presided over public service job cuts. Willis supported funding restrictions to the disabled, tried to get away with not funding cancer drugs, proposed rate capping and facilitated the lowest minimum wage increase (1.5%) since the 1990s. Sadly, I could bring the receipts of her fecklessness all day long. Willis has been a driving force behind locking in a strategy of managed decline and making everything worse for New Zealanders.
No comment from me. You've said it all. Reposted on Facebook. Be interested in any reasoned response or defence of team Luxon/Willis. Is he a nice guy when you get to know him or do you have to be paid like his influencer team