“Today’s Food Price Index results show that Labour’s economic mismanagement is continuing to have a corrosive effect on the holiday period. As well as paying inflated prices for Christmas presents, Kiwis are coughing up more to throw a summer BBQ,” says ACT Leader David Seymour.

“For the year ended November 2022 Stats NZ reports a 10.7 per cent annual increase in the price of food. In the past month alone prices have increased by 1.0 per cent.

“This is 3.5 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.

“As we enter summer season it is a Kiwi rite of passage to get the family round for a big Christmas lunch and fire up the bbq on Boxing Day. For many people this year it will be a massive strain or flat out unaffordable.

“Compared to last summer the price of meat, poultry and fish has risen by 12 per cent, while fruit and vegetables has increased by 20 per cent.

“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. Then to rub salt in the wound they re-hired the guy who oversaw all 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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