May 27, 2015
Kickstart kicking a kick for Maori workers
Labour MP Louisa Wall says removing the $1000 Kiwisaver kickstart will have a disproportionate effect on Maori.
Finance Minister Bill English says the subsidy is no longer needed to attract people to enroll in the superannuation scheme, which now has 2.5 million members.
But Ms Wall says 40 percent of New Zealanders still haven’t joined, let alone the 60,000 babies born every year.
Enrolments running at 13,000 a month are expected to fall off quickly.
"The cohort I am most worried about are the ones automatically enrolled when they start a new job, and when I read through some of the people in that category it's people who earn between $30,000 and $50,000, a lot of Maori and Pacific, people who are on full time contracted work in freezing works and those sorts of vocations, are and when I read through some of the people in that category people who are on full time contracted work in freezing works and those sorts of things, so actually the impact on Maori and Pacific of this change is big," she says.
Louisa Wall says the Government is squirreling away money so it can give more tax cuts to the rich in a couple of years.
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