Outgoing MP Andrew Bayly pushes for gradual superannuation age rise, starting 2029
Outgoing National MP Andrew Bayly is calling on every parliamentary party to commit to raising the New Zealand superannuation eligibility age from the next term of Parliament, arguing that further delay will make the eventual adjustment harder.
In an interview with RNZ, Bayly proposed increasing the eligibility age by one month every year from 2029, reaching 68 by 2065. He set out the proposals in a research paper published in the International Review of Public Administration, co-authored with economist Leonard Hong and data analyst Emmanuel Jo. Bayly told RNZ he deliberately published in an Asian academic journal to signal he was presenting his own considered view, not speaking on behalf of the National Party.
Superannuation — the government-funded pension most New Zealanders receive at 65 — is, in Bayly's words, the biggest economic issue facing the country. He and his co-authors estimated that under current settings, superannuation would consume almost 30 cents of every dollar of government tax revenue by 2065, up from about 19 cents today. Combined spending on super, health, and education would swallow nearly 80 percent of all tax revenue by the same year. Bayly called the rising cost a "freight train coming down the line" and argued for a gradual, planned approach now rather than reform forced by a crisis.
He has sent the paper to all party leaders in Parliament.
Bayly's proposal goes further than his own party's policy. In 2023, National campaigned on gradually lifting the super age to 67, initially saying adjustments would begin in 2037, but later pushing the start date back to 2044. Bayly told RNZ that National's plan was "worthwhile but insufficient" and would reduce super's share of tax revenue to 26.5 percent by 2065. Starting the increases in 2029 instead would shrink that share to about 25 percent, according to his modelling.
The paper's authors said their approach is gradual, planned, and gives successive age groups greater certainty for retirement planning.
Bayly also proposed that the dollar amount of superannuation payments rise more slowly. He said significant savings could be made by treating the pension the same as other welfare payments and indexing it — tying its annual increase — to general inflation rather than wage growth. He suggested a "moderated" approach with regular reviews to allow adjustments if pensioners fell too far behind the wider population.
The paper proposed a limited early-access scheme for people who could no longer work because of reduced capacity, lower life expectancy, or physically demanding jobs. Those people would be able to access the pension earlier but at a lower rate. The authors said the scheme would address one of the biggest objections to a later eligibility age and make reform more politically durable. The paper also backed compulsory KiwiSaver contributions and continuing payments into the NZ Super Fund.
On means-testing — checking whether a retiree's income or assets are high enough to reduce or remove their pension — Bayly's paper discounted the option, arguing it would be "exceedingly difficult" to win support across Parliament for such a radical change.
The political headwinds are real. An RNZ-Reid Research poll in July found 58 percent of voters wanted the super age to remain at 65, compared with 35.3 percent who supported an increase to 67 and 6.8 percent who were unsure. The same poll found more appetite for means-testing: 46.6 percent in favour, 40.7 percent opposed, and 12.7 percent undecided.
Bayly resigned as a minister in February. The NZ Herald assessed his resignation as much more significant than that of fellow minister Melissa Lee, because of its impact on Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.
The broader context here is familiar to anyone who has watched the superannuation debate cycle through Parliament over successive governments. A departing MP with no immediate electoral stake publishes a paper; the modelling is sober; the public polling is resistant; no party in government moves quickly. What sets Bayly's intervention apart is the specificity of the timeline and the breadth of the package — age, indexation, early access, and KiwiSaver treated as a connected set rather than isolated levers. Whether that joined-up framing shifts the political calculation is a question for the next term, not this one.
