- Hon Nicola Willis
- Hon Cameron Brewer
Farm workers will soon be able to use their own KiwiSaver savings to buy their first home under legislation introduced this week, say Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Cameron Brewer.
The KiwiSaver (First Home or Farm) Amendment Bill fixes two rules that have kept rural New Zealanders from a first-home withdrawal available to everyone else. It began as a member’s bill in the name of Rangitīkei MP Suze Redmayne, and the Government has adopted it.
“If your job comes with a roof over your head, you should not be locked out of your own savings,” Nicola Willis says.
“Many farm workers are required to live where they work. But a first-home withdrawal requires you to move into the home you buy, so they have been paying into KiwiSaver alongside everyone else while shut out of a withdrawal every other member can make.
“That rule was written with a suburban street in mind, not a farm gate. Rural New Zealand has been wearing the cost of it, and we are fixing that.”
The Bill also allows first-time farm buyers to use their KiwiSaver towards a farm bought through a company, trust or partnership they majority own and control, where the farm will be their main home. Current rules only allow it if the farm is in the buyer’s own name.
“A farm is a business and a home at the same time, which is why almost nobody buys one in their own name. The KiwiSaver rules were never written with that in mind, and aspiring farm owners have been shut out because of it,” Mr Brewer says.
“So a young couple who have spent a decade milking someone else’s cows and saving hard have been blocked from their own KiwiSaver by a technicality about whose name is on the title. That is not fair, and it is not smart.
“This change recognises how farm ownership actually works in this country, and it means new farm owners start out with less debt around their necks.
“Since 2010, hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders have used their KiwiSaver to get onto the property ladder. The people who milk the cows and work the land deserve to be among them.
“This is the Government fixing the basics and building the future, so the people who work our land can own a piece of it,” Mr Brewer says.
