Four pressures we can see coming, and five risks we share

The party's plans strengthen New Zealand's position on this pressure by 2050.

The plans leave the path roughly where current settings put it.

The plans ease today's costs by adding to tomorrow's, or unwind settings that were building the position.

Whether the policies driving the effect would likely survive a change of government. Both readings come from the future-effect and durability scores on the Issues page, weighted to 2050.

By 2050 there will be 2.8 working-age people for every person over 65, down from 3.8 now. NZ Super already costs about $23b a year and rises to about $76b; health spending heads from about 6.9% to 9.4% of GDP.

On current settings, net core Crown debt rises from about 43% of GDP today to about 96% by 2050, because Super and health grow faster than tax. That is Treasury's 2025 path restarted from its newer, lower 2026 forecast; Treasury's own projection, built on older forecasts, reaches 104%. [1]

No party proposes changes at the scale Treasury says would hold debt steady, and none says which services would be rationed if health costs outrun tax.

If you will not change the Super age, which taxes or spending pay for an older population?

Debt at 43% of GDP is like a household owing just under half a year's income: about $34,600 for every New Zealander. Each 10 points is roughly $8,000 a person, so 74% (ACT) is about $60,000, 96% (current settings) about $77,000 and 104% (NZ First) about $84,000.

Treasury's favourable scenario ends near 71% of GDP and its unfavourable scenario near 126%, a wider range than between any two parties (74% to 104%). On its high interest rate case, debt reaches about 132% before any party policy.

Adding costs parties mention but leave out of their sums lifts the Greens to about 115%, NZ First to 119% and Opportunity to 138%. ACT rises to 85% if its back-office cuts are not sustained.

Output per hour has grown about 0.7% a year for 20 years, and New Zealand produces about a third less per person than Australia. [22]

On current trends the income gap with Australia stays open and young, skilled people keep leaving: 12,471 citizens left in January to March 2026, the most for that quarter since 2013.

No party sets a measurable target for output per hour or business investment, the drivers of wages.

What will your plan do to output per hour, and how will we know by 2029?

Net zero for long-lived gases by 2050 is in law, and meeting it means roughly doubling electricity supply while gas runs down. Insurers are already restricting flood cover in some towns. [19]

Since 2010, 97% of central government natural hazard spending has gone on response and recovery and 3% on reducing risk, in a study commissioned by the insurer IAG. [25] On that pattern the bill arrives after each disaster, not before.

No party sets out who pays when a town becomes uninsurable: owners, ratepayers or taxpayers.

When a town can no longer get insurance, who pays to protect or move it?

The annual need rises from about $20b now to slightly more than $30b a year by the 2050s, and renewals are up to 80% of need in some sectors. [5]

New Zealand already invests about 5.8% of GDP a year in infrastructure, more than many rich countries, yet gets less for it. Deferred maintenance and capped rates push the cost onto later taxpayers and ratepayers.

Few parties commit infrastructure funding that is designed to survive a change of government, which is what a 30-year plan needs.

Will your infrastructure plan survive a change of government, and how is renewal paid for?

New Zealand builds none of the frontier models it depends on, so its influence comes from how it regulates use at home and which international rules it joins. 5,995 cyber security incidents were reported to the National Cyber Security Centre in 2024/25, 331 of potential national significance and about a quarter linked to suspected state-sponsored actors (NCSC Cyber Threat Report 2025).

• Law: decide whether to pass an AI-specific law or rely on privacy, consumer and human rights law, and set rules for high-risk uses such as deepfakes and automated decisions.
• Capability: a central point in government (an AI office or minister) to track risks, assess systems the state buys, and fund the National Cyber Security Centre.
• Infrastructure: conditions on data centres, government data held offshore, and public procurement of AI.

• OECD and the Global Partnership on AI: shared principles and testing methods New Zealand can adopt rather than invent.
• Australia and the Pacific: aligned standards, joint cyber defence and shared incident response.
• United Nations: talks on lethal autonomous weapons under the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, and UN processes on AI governance.

No party addresses loss of control over frontier AI or how New Zealand would assess or test powerful models, and none links AI to cyber defence, biological misuse or election security. No party commits to an AI safety institute, a national testing capability, or joining the international network of such institutes.

If an AI system were used to attack New Zealand's power grid or flood the election with fake videos, which agency would be responsible, and what would your party give it to act?

New Zealand's export earnings depend on climate-sensitive farming and on keeping pests and diseases out, and it imports most of its fuel, fertiliser inputs and many foods. New Zealand's $1.3b climate finance package for 2022 to 2025 expired, and climate finance for 2025 fell from $250m to $100m.

• Biosecurity: border funding, penalties and the Biosecurity Act rewrite, which guard farming and native species against pests that spread as the climate shifts.
• Supply resilience: stocks and diversified sources for fuel, fertiliser and food inputs, so a global harvest failure or shipping shock does not become a domestic crisis.
• Planning for climate migration: residence and visa pathways for Pacific people displaced by sea-level rise, set in New Zealand law.

• UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement: the ambition of New Zealand's own NDC and its voice for 1.5 degrees at COP negotiations.
• Pacific Islands Forum: climate finance, loss and damage support, and a regional deal on displacement and resettlement (New Zealand hosts the Forum in 2027).
• Biodiversity and ocean treaties: the Convention on Biological Diversity and the High Seas (BBNJ) Treaty, plus trade-based food and input security arrangements.

No party sets out how New Zealand would cope with a simultaneous global harvest failure or shipping disruption (food, fuel and fertiliser stocks together). No party costs a post-2025 climate finance package or a legal pathway for Pacific climate migrants.

How much climate finance would your party give the Pacific each year from 2026, and where is it in your fiscal plan?

Border closure bought New Zealand time in 2020, but the Royal Commission found the country was poorly prepared before COVID-19 arrived and that a standing legal framework is still missing. The COVID-19 Royal Commission made 63 recommendations; in July 2026 the government accepted 21 in full, 36 in principle and 6 in part, and declined a standalone pandemic law (government response, 29 July 2026).

• Law: a standing pandemic law, or a rewritten Health Act, that sets powers for lockdowns, borders and quarantine with rights safeguards and select committee scrutiny.
• Capability: surveillance and wastewater testing, laboratory capacity, quarantine readiness, stockpiles and a plan to get vaccines fast.
• Biosecurity: rules on gene technology and on who can order synthetic DNA or work with dangerous pathogens.

• World Health Organization: the International Health Regulations (including the 2024 amendments) and the WHO Pandemic Agreement, which covers pathogen and benefit sharing.
• Biological Weapons Convention: verification and confidence-building measures to deter deliberate release.
• Australia and the Pacific: shared early warning, laboratory networks and vaccine supply deals.

No party has a policy on screening synthetic DNA orders, oversight of high-risk laboratory research, or the Biological Weapons Convention. No party sets out what it would do on the WHO Pandemic Agreement.

Would your party sign the WHO Pandemic Agreement and pass a standing pandemic law before the next emergency, and if not, what would it do instead?

New Zealand would be far from any front line but is exposed through sea lanes for fuel and trade, undersea cables, cyberattack and the security of its Pacific neighbours. The 2025 Defence Capability Plan commits $12b over four years, including $9b of new funding, lifting defence to more than 2% of GDP within eight years.

• Defence Force size, equipment and readiness, including cyber and space capabilities and Pacific disaster and surveillance work.
• Resilience of critical infrastructure to cut-off or attack: fuel stocks, undersea cables, the grid and government networks.
• Domestic law on the nuclear-free zone, export controls and foreign interference.

• Alliances and partnerships: the Australian alliance and Anzac force integration, Five Eyes, and the open question of AUKUS Pillar II.
• Arms control: the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the Non-Proliferation Treaty review cycle and talks on autonomous weapons at the UN.
• Pacific security: the Pacific Islands Forum, regional policing and maritime surveillance, and aid that keeps New Zealand the partner of choice.

No party says what New Zealand would do to keep fuel, food and medicines flowing, or to protect undersea cables, if a war in Asia closed sea lanes for months. No party sets out a nuclear disarmament initiative beyond holding current treaty positions.

If a war in Asia cut shipping for six months, what would your party have in place for fuel, food and medicines, and with which partners?

New Zealand starts from relatively high trust, but political parties and news media have been its least trusted institutions, and trust splits sharply by whether people feel they have a say. In the OECD's latest trust survey (fieldwork late 2025, published June 2026), 47% of New Zealanders had high or moderately high trust in the central government (OECD average 40%), but only 36% trusted political parties.

• Election law: donations and lobbying rules, enrolment and voting rules, and rules on deceptive or AI-generated election material enforced by the Electoral Commission.
• Institutions: independent checks such as a Parliamentary Budget Office or costing unit, an anti-corruption body, the Official Information Act and stable funding for public media.
• Security: foreign interference offences, intelligence agency resources, and a regulator for online platforms.

• Five Eyes and the National Security Strategy partners: shared intelligence on foreign interference and influence operations.
• Christchurch Call: the multi-government and platform initiative on violent extremist content online, now run by a charitable foundation.
• OECD and the Open Government Partnership: shared standards on integrity, transparency and countering disinformation.

No party has a plan for AI-generated election material in time for the 2029 election, or for the shrinking of local news beyond funding public media. No party proposes new international cooperation on foreign interference or disinformation.

What would your party change before the 2029 election so voters can trust what they see online and know who is paying to influence them?

The bill passed its first reading 117 to 6 in 2025; only Te Pāti Māori voted against. It was parked in February 2026. Only ACT states a current position, with a safeguard.

Opportunity would seek 10-year cross-party plans for health and education; National would build cross-party agreement on infrastructure. ACT, NZ First and Te Pāti Māori offer nothing.

ACT would abolish the Climate Change Commission; NZ First would leave the Paris Agreement with no alternative. Labour and Opportunity propose new long-term bodies.