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New Zealand National Party

Fixing the basics. Building the future.

Christopher Luxon is Prime Minister. National governs with ACT and NZ First. He survived a second confidence vote on 12 August. Chris Penk returned to the House on 25 August and would not say if he challenged him.

Centre-right. In government now. Low tax, surplus, compulsory KiwiSaver. Shrink day-to-day spending as a share of the economy. On 23 August they pledged no new taxes. Cabinet locked a one-year delay on the next fuel-tax rise. Smaller rises start in 2028. A freeze for the whole next term is not locked. Luxon made staying in the Paris climate deal a coalition bottom line. They already govern with ACT and NZ First. Labour's new tax would not land on most voters.

What they want

• Keep tax low. No income tax cut until the books are in surplus. Shrink day-to-day spending below 30% of GDP. Debt under 40% of GDP is the long aim.
• The forecast is a $4.0 billion surplus in 2028/29, then $11.7 billion in 2030/31. Debt peaks at 43.9% of GDP in 2027/28, then falls to 39.5% by 2030/31.
• Set aside $451.8 million to keep the current school lunch programme going until the next election.
• An independent unit to cost party promises at the 2029 election. ACT and NZ First blocked a public unit this term.
• No new taxes if they win. That includes no bed-night levy and no bank tax. From July 2027 they would send leftover visitor-levy money to councils by how many overseas guests stay there. They will not lift that levy for at least three years. No capital gains, wealth or streaming tax. Cabinet locked a one-year delay on the next fuel-tax rise. Smaller rises start in 2028, not a freeze for the whole term. Stay in the Paris climate deal. Luxon made that a coalition bottom line.
• Free cervical screening from March 2027 for women aged 25 to 69. Free bowel screening from age 50 by 2029. Finish free breast screening to age 74 by 2029. Pilot prostate and lung screening.
• Random drug tests for people on Jobseeker, starting with 10,000 a year. A second fail means an assessment, and the benefit can be cut if they do not follow the plan. From April 2028, a lower rate after two of the last three years on it, a 26-week stand-down for people who keep quitting a job, and a five-year wait for new residents.
• A further $604 million for the medicines budget. Mostly from a 10 percent cut to foreign aid outside the Pacific. Pacific aid stays. Because that aid is about two-thirds of the total, the cut falls much harder on the rest. A 2 percent cut to the foreign ministry saves about $45.6 million on top.
• Students stay at school until they finish Year 11, or turn 16, whichever is later. They can leave sooner if they already have a job or a training place.
• Work with schools on one set of start and finish dates, so families are not juggling different calendars.
• Make KiwiSaver compulsory. Lift payments to 6% each by 2032. Enrol every baby from July 2027 with a $1,500 kick-start.
• Replace NCEA. Put walls back in open-plan classrooms. Speed up consent for infrastructure.
• End screens and one-to-one devices in early childhood education. Tight limits in the first years of school. Writing checks on paper. A start check before a child moves to primary. Not a pass-or-fail gate.
• More specialist classrooms for children with high needs. Another $23 million for 20 rooms. Three new specialist schools.
• Write national standards for river gravel and farm quarries so flood work is easier.
• $300 million in cheap loans to build farm water storage, starting with five projects. Those loans are meant to be paid back within ten years.
• Easier consent for lower-risk on-farm water storage and irrigation. A rural water plan in 2027, with a public list of storage projects.
• Deals with the countries that supply fertiliser, so an export ban does not cut New Zealand off. A $10 million fund to help local plants make nitrogen and switch off gas.
• A new marine reserve of 23.5 square kilometres off Waiheke, and a bigger reserve at Goat Island. Remove the ring-net exemption in the Gulf's high protection areas. They have not set a date.
• Review bottom trawling. They will not ban it. Aim to protect 50 percent of our waters by 2040, up from 32 percent. A $20 million fund with the seafood sector to lighten trawl gear. No recreational fishing licence. No commercial sale of marlin.
• Year 0-10 curriculums landed without the words climate change. Stanford then told the ministry to put the term back.
• Cheap loans for home solar, batteries and insulation. A home hookup must be signed off within two working days.
• Households could sell surplus power to any company, not only the one they buy from.
• Paid parental leave from 26 weeks to 30.
• Cut the student-loan take from pay from 12 cents to 10 cents in the dollar, from April 2027, if you stay here. Charge more interest and chase harder if you leave.
• A public vote on MMP, and on a four-year parliamentary term.
• Widen who can buy a first home with a 5 percent deposit. One income cap of $300,000 for singles and couples. Banks still decide if you can pay the loan. About $4 million to $6 million a year from money they already have.
• Let councils require car parks again in the suburbs, in new subdivisions, and in business parks, outside places marked for more housing. The 2020 ban on minimum car parks goes.
• Speed work and visitor visas for partners of New Zealand citizens, so people who meet a partner overseas can bring them home. Funded to start by July 2027.
• Faster consents for new supermarkets. Split Foodstuffs so Pak'nSave competes with New World and Four Square, if a six-month watchdog review says shoppers would be better off. They would change the grocery law in the first 100 days to run that test.
• They say Auckland needs a second harbour crossing. They will not pick a tunnel, a bridge or an upgrade until at least 2027. Peters called the extra report a waste and wants an open tender now.
• Start the first stage of Mill Road, from Manukau to Alfriston, in late 2028. Set aside $1.75 billion in Budget 2028, plus $100 million to protect the rest of the route to Drury.
• Fully fund the Belfast to Pegasus motorway and the Woodend bypass. $800 million in the first Budget, so construction can start in 2027.
• Lift the adult minimum wage each year, roughly with inflation. They will not freeze it.
• A first-hire package for small firms, with lighter penalties for genuine paperwork mistakes, and a faster track for minor employment disputes.
• Review the $60,000 point where a small firm must register for GST. Do not lift it until that is paid for. Keep the 20% instant deduction on new gear.
• Stop people suing companies in court for climate harm. Goldsmith's bill passed 67 to 53 on 18 August.
• Put 50 extra police on Auckland trains, buses and ferries. $7 million a year from Budget 2027. Auckland first. Other cities later if it works.
• Put the national fire service under the emergency minister. Drop the board. Get ordered trucks into service. Extra health support for volunteers.
• Will not work with Opportunity because of tax.

Things to watch

• They would add $604 million for medicines by cutting aid outside the Pacific by 10 percent. ACT would go back to 2017 levels except Ukraine, about $283 million a year, and Peters called that deeper cut mindless.
• The Tertiary Education Commission has told nursing schools to hold new enrolments at 2025 levels unless they can show room for placements. Simmonds said enrolments hit 11,270 in 2025. Educators say that cap makes no sense while hospitals are short.
• Willis set aside $451.8 million to keep the current school lunch programme until the next election. She says now is not the time for an income tax cut. The forecast surplus is $4.0 billion in 2028/29.
• They would test people on Jobseeker at random, and from April 2028 cut the rate after a long stretch on it. Peters said that could slide into fascist behaviour. Seymour backed the tests and called the rate cut a cop-out.
• They still want a Foodstuffs split if a watchdog review says shoppers would be better off. ACT now wants faster new shops and would leave the two chains whole. Peters said they copied NZ First.
• Willis says dropping the instant deduction on new gear saves $5.5 billion, not Labour's $7.7 billion. Edmonds says Willis is wrong. Experts say the start date and the later clawback decide who is right.

What they promised, and what happened

They are in government. These are the gaps between the 2023 pitch and what landed.

• A 2026 law left the Winter Energy Payment off the exempt list. The 10 September review found more than 30,000 payments were wrongly stopped. About 16,270 pensioners and veterans lost that winter payment. 2,460 people lost a main benefit. About 12,000 lost extra help. Arrears are about $2.5 million. Upston accepted responsibility.
• They pledged 10,000 public EV charge points by 2030. Newsroom counted 129 new chargers in the year to June. The extra grant money did not land. Watts still calls 10,000 a stretch.
• Jones stopped Labour's about 70 million litre diesel reserve in July 2024, then paid to bring tanks back at Marsden Point. On 14 October 2026 Willis and Jones extended the Z Energy stock deal to August 2027: 550,000 barrels, about 90 million litres, which Z Energy owns and the Crown can release.
• They did not campaign on dumping Smokefree 2025. The coalition repealed it in February 2024, then halved tax on heated tobacco.
• The 2050 methane cut was lowered. They scrapped on-farm methane pricing, repealed the oil and gas ban, and passed Goldsmith's climate-lawsuit bar.
• They shelved a ban on hard-to-recycle PVC and polystyrene food packaging. It was due in mid-2025, then delayed. The ministry said other election-year jobs came first.
• Tax cuts were sold as fully funded, then extra borrowing rose $12 billion versus the December forecast. On 12 October Willis said now is not the time to cut taxes: the forecast surplus is $4.0 billion in 2028/29, and debt peaks at 43.9% of GDP in 2027/28 before falling to 39.5% by 2030/31.
• They cancelled Labour's iReX ferries. KiwiRail put the scrapped project at $671 million. Replacements are aimed at 2029.
• Willis has kept shrinking the core public service. Infometrics counted 177 Wellington businesses shut in a year. About 8,700 more cuts sit on the books by mid-2029. About 10,000 walked off on 9 September over pay. Luxon said they should be at work.
• Brown admitted Health NZ full-time nurses rose by 54 from March 2024 to March 2026. The government had been saying more than 2,000 extra.
• Bishop and Jones paused Waikato Plan Change 1 farm rules until 2032. Tainui said that undermines the Treaty settlement.
• They passed move-on orders under urgency. Police can order people 18 and over to leave a public place for up to 24 hours for begging, rough sleeping or disorder. Returning is only an offence if the same behaviour continues. Goldsmith was unhappy ACT backed Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori on those return rules.
• The Waitangi Tribunal's 25 September Part 2 report said the Crown had no clear alternative plan when it scrapped Te Aka Whai Ora. Doocey said they will not revisit a stand-alone Māori health authority.
• They spent a year studying a Foodstuffs split and did not take it to Cabinet this term. On 16 September they pledged a six-month watchdog review, then a split if that review says shoppers would be better off.
• Luxon's Jobseeker target is 140,000 or fewer by 2030. RNZ, 8 September: the count is almost 80,000 over that, and three of his nine key targets risk being missed.
• They passed military-style academies into law under urgency. A first pilot saw 7 of 10 reoffend, and a teen on the second pilot's community phase was charged over two armed robberies.
• Bishop and Watts paused Head Start council-merger decisions until Cabinet in early 2027. Wellington's Andrew Little said the region spent nearly $250,000 on a rushed proposal. They still want changes before the 2028 local elections.

Who pays

Raised $6.3 million in 2025, the most of any party. Named 2026 gifts over $20,000 add up to about $2.3 million. That is not a full-year total. A lot of it is from companies and well-off people: Rank Group (Graeme Hart) $500,000, Nick Mowbray $250,000, Multum Corporation Limited $100,000, oil and gas, property, construction.

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