 In July 2007 the Fifth Labour Government introduced KiwiSaver as a voluntary retirement-savings scheme on top of New Zealand Superannuation.Employees choose to contribute 3%, 4% or 8% of their gross earnings, with employers contributing 3%, and the government contributing a $1000 "kick-start" when an employee joins KiwiSaver as well as 50c per dollar on the first $1043 contributed by the employee each year.The savings are privately managed in a scheme of the person's choosing (if they don't choose a scheme, the government assigns them one), with the government's role limited to regulation and to the collecting and passing on of contributions via the PAYE tax system.