The National Party has abandoned its 2023 election promise to let people under 30 withdraw KiwiSaver savings to pay rental bond deposits. The policy was never turned into law after National won government in October 2023.

The commitment, announced in July 2023, would have allowed under-30s to access their KiwiSaver accounts specifically for rental bond costs — the upfront payment required before moving into a rental property. National presented it as an affordability measure for younger renters who struggle to find several weeks' rent upfront before a tenancy begins. The party carried it to the election intending to legislate it upon taking office.

It was never introduced to Parliament. The policy is now formally abandoned.

The decision removes one of National's more distinctive housing affordability proposals. KiwiSaver withdrawal rules are narrowly defined — currently available only for first-home purchases, serious financial hardship, serious illness, and emigration — and extending them to rental bonds would have required amending the KiwiSaver Act 2006. The legislative work was never started.

When National announced the policy, the Green Party quickly identified a structural flaw in the logic. The Greens argued that giving tenants access to additional funds would likely push up rental bond demands rather than ease them — landlords and property managers, aware that tenants could draw on savings, would have little reason to keep bonds at four weeks' rent. Economists broadly shared this straightforward supply-and-demand concern at the time.

The original policy carried an internal tension. KiwiSaver is designed as a long-term retirement savings vehicle; withdrawals for a bond — a sum returned when the tenancy ends — would reduce balances temporarily without creating lasting financial benefit. Unlike a first-home withdrawal, where KiwiSaver funds become home equity, bond money produces no enduring return to the member. This awkward fit within the scheme's design drew criticism from retirement savings specialists who worried about normalising non-retirement withdrawals.

The broader picture reflects a government managing a crowded legislative timetable in which secondary housing commitments have not been prioritised. Coalition negotiations after the 2023 election produced detailed agreements across National, ACT, and New Zealand First — and KiwiSaver rental bonds did not feature significantly in those deals. Once the policy was not locked into the coalition's core commitments, its prospects became uncertain.

For renters under 30, the abandonment is mainly symbolic rather than a practical loss — the policy never existed in law, so nothing concretely changes. The underlying affordability problem it was meant to address — that bond costs remain a genuine barrier to entry in the rental market — has not been solved, and no alternative mechanism has been proposed.