Back in days before the 1980’s when New Zealand, then recognised as a socially-cohesive nation with an economy based on ‘import substitution’ and significant self-sufficiency, the ‘costs of living’ and family formation could be comfortably funded from the wages of a single ‘bread-winner’.

At the age of 60 years we could retire from the ‘senior’ status we enjoyed in a fully employed labour force creating, thereby, opportunity for younger people to advance as productive and responsible leaders of our communities. We were rewarded for our contribution to GDP with a universal pension, the ‘couple’s rate’ of which was equivalent to 80% of ‘average weekly incomes’.

Prior to the 1980’s, apart from taxation on incomes and expenditure, a moderate level of local government rating was a manageable obligation along with all those other discretionary expenditures comprising the ‘cost of living’. Even as recently as 2007 the Shand Inquiry determined Local Government Rates equated to just 3% of average household expenditure.

Then during the 1980’s began a reversal in the financial circumstances of retired working people and their families:

• The qualifying age for N Z Superannuation was increased from age 60 to 65 years in the presence of increasing unemployment leaving many manual workers struggling on welfare at a crucial period of savings accumulation prior to retirement.
• The relationship of the couple’s rate of N Z Superannuation payments was effectively reduced from 80% to 65% of ‘average weekly incomes’, and
• In recent decades periods of high inflation with local government costs exceeding background CPI levels, rates as a percentage of rapidly diminishing budgets of low-income households have reached unmanageable proportions.
• From 1 July this year, further precipitated by the implementation of Water Reforms, single superannuitants without supplementary income in the most modest of housing here in Upper Hutt; are expected to allocate no less than 15% of their meagre weekly budget to satisfying the funding demands of local government. This is five times the ‘basket of prices’ benchmark under-pinning the sufficiency of N Z Superannuation.

The oldest population cohort of New Zealanders, those born before 1 July 1942 were excluded from KiwiSaver and do not enjoy this supplementary retirement income support scheme. Together with many others up to 10 years younger who have not maximised KiwiSaver accumulations; they are exposed to insidious impoverishment at an age when they are most vulnerable.

This is a looming crisis which demands political intervention.

Lew Rohloff
Vice President

lew.rohloff@gmail.com

A “thank you” to Lew Rohloff from Upper Hutt Greypower for sending this article to The Upper Hutt Connection.

28/04/26