“The price of food continues to rise and as much as they try to blame overseas factors, Labour needs to accept it has cooked up this problem all by itself,” says ACT Leader David Seymour.

“For the year ended October 2022 Stats NZ reports a 10.1 per cent annual increase in the price of food, the largest increase in 14 years. In the past month alone prices have increased by 1.8 per cent.

“This is almost three per cent higher than the 7.2 per cent Consumer Price Index (CPI) figure. When a food superpower like New Zealand has record food inflation, far higher than the CPI, we can definitively say inflation is a local problem, caused by Labour’s economic mismanagement.

“There is a massive human cost in all of this. This morning it was reported an elderly woman in Christchurch has been forced to get by eating cat food because she can’t afford anything else. Is this what New Zealanders are meant to accept in life under Labour?

“The world’s first Instagram PM is clueless when it comes to dealing with these real world issues, and Kiwis are paying the price.

“The Government is entirely responsible for local conditions. This is the Government that indemnified the Reserve Bank after its insistence on a dual target helped encourage irresponsible monetary policy.

“The Reserve Bank distorted government policy making by giving it cheap credit, now we are all paying the cost, literally in the rising price of everything.

“Labour either showed how little it cares or how little it understands by re-hiring the Reserve Bank Governor who oversaw all of this.

“Kiwis shouldn’t have to just accept that New Zealand is too expensive. ACT doesn’t accept that and with the right policies and the political will to make them happen it doesn’t have to be.

“The Government has to take responsibility for its policies, namely its spending, its Reserve Bank legislation and appointment of Adrian Orr, its long closure of the border and its expensive ideological experiment called the ‘immigration reset.’

“The next government will need to clean up Labour’s mess with sensible economic policy, restore credibility to the reserve bank, and rebuild the faith of the world with a welcoming immigration policy. These ideas and more are laid out in ACT’s paper New Zealand’s Cost of Living Crisis.”

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