Max Rashbrook

With the modelling we did, again, if you assume that young people hit 18 with $10,000 to $20,000 in their accounts,

And if you assume that they then go and do some trades training or university study or whatever, but then they're contributing as adults from, you know, 22, 23, whatever at normal rates, plausibly people, you know, all or virtually all young New Zealanders are hitting age 30 with, you know, 70 to 80,000 or something like that.

If they've got a partner, then that's a home deposit, you know, and that's really, really widespread.

Again, in contrast to the current situation, where famously increasingly people are reliant on the bank of mum and dad, that's great for the people who have that, not so good for people who don't.

Yeah, it's a great question, and it's one that I think we're all grappling with.

Well, for one thing, I think something like Kids KiwiSaver would ensure that at least everyone was starting that savings journey on a relatively even foot.

The Australian model, there's a lot of discussion about it.

And look, it's got some real strengths.

We're all very aware now just how much more they're saving than we are, and that's great.

But yeah, our retirement commission said the good thing about New Zealand's retirement system is it diminishes the disparities between people and working age years.

The Australian system amplifies those disparities.

And that's partly, as you say, because people are saving 12% of very different incomes.

it's also because australia provides tax breaks for saving and that's one of those ideas that sounds intuitively great do you think about the fact that the people who will take most advantage of that are the people who are able to save the most so it's quite regressive

Look, I think trying to fix some of the gaps in KiwiSaver at the moment, you know, the fact that women often have much lower balances than men, issues around what happens when people are on paid parental leave, things like that are really important.

I think maintaining New Zealand super as the bedrock of our retirement system is really crucial.

And then I mean,

a lot of the solutions are outside the retirement system.

You know, they're about those disparities and incomes in the first place and what can we do about those.

So would that mean, when you say decoupling, would that be effectively that the employer still has to keep paying the contribution even if the employee has opted out?

And so you'd do that rather than going for compulsion across the board?