Pitched as a line in the sand against selling the country's strategic assets, NZ First says it will block any privatisation of state-owned enterprises such as Kiwibank and Air New Zealand, and treats keeping them in public hands as a bottom line of the current government.

The Policy: NZ First State Assets Protection Policy — 2023 Election →

What it does:

• Commits NZ First to oppose any sale, partial float or "asset recycling" of major Crown-owned businesses, with leader Winston Peters and deputy Shane Jones repeatedly ruling out a Kiwibank sell-down during this parliamentary term.
• Reflects the National–NZ First coalition agreement, under which State-Owned Enterprises Minister Simeon Brown has confirmed the government is not selling assets this term.
• Defends majority public ownership of Air New Zealand, in which the Crown holds about 52% (roughly 51.9%) after the 2013 partial sell-down, and which the government renationalised in 2001 for about NZ$885 million.
• Frames Kiwibank — a fully Crown-owned bank competing with the four big Australian-owned lenders that Peters says control around 85% of the New Zealand market — as a public asset to be grown rather than sold.
• Goes further than mere defence: in May 2026 Peters proposed buying the Bank of New Zealand back from National Australia Bank and merging it with Kiwibank into a Crown-owned "National Bank of New Zealand", which NZ First costed at roughly $7.5 billion.

The result:

The pledge is a live source of tension inside the very government NZ First sits in. After Air New Zealand reported a $40 million half-year loss in February 2026 (down from a $106 million profit a year earlier), ACT leader David Seymour renewed calls to sell the Crown's Air NZ stake, arguing taxpayers "pay twice — once as a taxpayer and once as a passenger". Peters called selling into a downturn "economic lunacy". On Kiwibank, Brown wrote to its parent asking it to revisit growth options including partial privatisation, while Finance Minister Nicola Willis said the government would not list Kiwibank without an electoral mandate. NZ First and Labour (whose leader Chris Hipkins says he opposes a Kiwibank sale "full stop") both remain opposed. NZ First's own BNZ buy-back counter-proposal drew sharp criticism: Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop called it "fantasy land stuff" and estimated the true cost at $24–30 billion — far above NZ First's $7.5 billion figure — while Labour's Tangi Utikere dismissed it as "another reckon".

The impacts to watch:

• Whether the "no sales this term" line holds, given Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has signalled a "sophisticated conversation" about asset recycling after the 2026 election.
• How Kiwibank funds growth without private capital, after a 2025 Reserve Bank capital-rule change worth about $500 million to the bank let it shelve an earlier private capital raise.
• Whether keeping a loss-making, capital-hungry Air New Zealand majority-owned is best for taxpayers, or whether public ownership protects connectivity for a geographically isolated economy.