Bruce Cotterill: Cost of living: Why prices never really fall and $7 coffee is here to stay

There is plenty of chat about the cost of living.

In fact, the people and politicians alike are talking about it at every opportunity. It’s usually in the form of something like “we have to get the cost of living down”.

And why not? It feels like it just keeps on going up.

John MacDonald: My question to you about the economy

Do you feel better off than you did three years ago?

With it being election year, that’s the question politicians are going to be asking you. It’s the question I’m asking you too in light of the latest unemployment numbers - which are the highest in more than a decade.

Peter Dunne: The state of the economy

The election year blame game over the state of the economy is underway, with all the accompanying fanatical partisan vehemence that makes the politicians' claims and counterclaims tedious and pointless.

National will always say that they have spent their time in government cleaning up the unmitigated mess left by the last Labour government. And Labour will shamelessly claim that National has wrecked all the economic gains they secured while in office. The only point both have in common is their blind insistence that, based on their respective records in government, the other side should never be trusted in office again. But the underlying truth is that neither should be believed when it comes to their claims about how well they can manage the economy.

Andrew Dickens: Andrew Dickens: What can we do to ease debt and the cost of living?

Household budgets remain under pressure from rising costs, a credit expert says.

Centrix’s latest credit indicator shows consumer arrears fell by 7,000 in June to 478,000, representing 12.36% of the credit-active population.

Clive Bibby: Productivity gains and responsible spending are the key to prosperity

For those of us who recognise the need to balance the nation’s books, politicians who focus on fixing the things that matter are “gold” in the modern era.

I use the term “gold” advisedly because its value is based on its rarity.

In just about every country of the Free World, governments are trapped in a cycle of frivolous spending which only increases national debt to unsustainable levels.

Point of Order: New Zealand First Surge, National Regain Lead

The Taxpayers’ Union reports –

Good news for the Coalition as they extend their lead over the Centre-Left bloc this month, with National taking back the top spot from Labour in this month’s Taxpayers’ Union-Curia Poll.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive 4/2/25

Climate change minister froze out farm leaders – but (is he a closet greenie?) warmed to Greenpeace and WWF lobbyists

Your monitors of the Beehive website can tell you what ministers are up to so long as they post a press statement. They can’t tell you what ministers have been doing which they shouldn’t have been doing, if they keep quiet about it. And they can’t tell you what minister haven’t been doing that they should have been doing.

Sir Bob Jones: The cost of living

I returned to New Zealand a week back after seven weeks abroad, primarily in France then Glasgow. As always, my first action was to read all the circa 100 newspapers awaiting me.

A constant gripe was the cost of living and trust me, it’s well justified, when compared with some other countries. Here’s some examples.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 5/12/23

Defence ministerial meeting meant Collins missed the Maori Party’s mischief-making capers in Parliament

Maybe this is not the best time for our Minister of Defence to have gone overseas.

Not when the Maori Party is inviting (or should that be inciting?) its followers to join a revolution in a post which promoted its protest plans with a picture of a pair of pistols.

Point of Order: Have the new leaders forgotten the parlous state of the country’s finances?

While National, ACT and NZ First are scrambling over the formation of a new government, their leaders appear to have forgotten the parlous state of the country’s finances and the urgent need to get them back into shape.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 16/8/23

Dairy prices have slumped and international student numbers are flagging – but Robertson rejoices in the pace of wage growth

While dairy farmers were lamenting the impact on prices of a flagging demand for dairy products in the critical China market, Education Minister Jan Tinetti was noting the importance of China in the international education business.

Almost 12,000 Chinese students were studying in New Zealand, she said when expressing her delight that China’s Minister of Education, Huai Jinpeng, is in Wellington and Christchurch this week.

Robert MacCulloch: The biggest issue of Election 2023 will not be debated (since both Nats & Labour have no answer)

Both our major parties agree that the single biggest issue in this election will be the cost-of-living, as predicted by DownToEarth Kiwi back in 2021, way before National & Labour woke up to the fact (when we ran a headline, "The Next Election will be a Cost-of-Living Election). Surveys now show voters' number one concern is cost-of-living.

So what plans do National & Labour have to reduce the cost-of-living? Take a look at their websites. Labour want to address such issues by increasing benefits; National want to by cutting taxes (though not by much). Both parties want to take cash out of one person's pocket and put it in anothers so they can better "afford" to pay a bill. Yet those bills will still be the same size. Neither party has a plan to reduce the cost, nor price, of anything.

Mike Hosking: Government advice on saving money is condescending

What's the line about history repeating itself?

What undid the Helen Clark Government was shower heads and water pressure. It wasn’t their only issue, by the time they had got to their third term they looked tired and, worse, they looked arrogant.

Fast forward 20-something years and history repeats.

Point of Order: Budget poses awkward economic problem

Awkward economic dilemmas confront the government, as it prepares to set out its economic programme in the budget next week.

The key one is this: does it use fiscal means to reinforce the work of the Reserve Bank in damping down inflation, or does it focus on the power of the budget to win the election?

Certainly the Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, has declared it will be a “no-frills” budget. But, in the same breath, he says he wants to ease pressures on household budgets from the soaring cost-of-living.

Cam Slater: This Will Be the Number One Issue for the Election

The number one issue for the election is going to be the cost of living crisis, fuelled by this spendthrift Labour Government and their wasteful spending and policy settings. Law and order will be very close to cost of living, but it will be cost of living that will be the main focus.

Point of Order: Finance Minister has set himself a herculean task in framing an election-winning budget

Finance Minister Grant Robertson may be getting grey hairs as he toils on what his backbench colleagues hope will be an election-winning budget (due for presentation on May 18).

The difficulty is that economic problems are piling up. The cost-of-living crisis is worsening – inflation, although it may have stabilised, remains stubbornly high at 6.7% and NZ’s current account deficit, at $34bn, is threatening the country’s credit rating.

Point of Order: Incomes are lifted for many Kiwis and Maori mountain managers in Taranaki get $35m.....

.....but “Egmont” is being expunged

The big bread-and-butter issue of pay packets and weekly incomes was at the core of three ministerial statements since Point of Order’s previous monitoring of the Beehive website.

Andrew Little was earning his keep, meanwhile, by delivering a speech in which he discussed co-governance.

Cam Slater: This Is the Issue That Costs Elections

Yesterday morning the National Party announced that they were proposing to re-write the education syllabus if they win the election. I’ve provided you with a link because it is now hard to find, such is the interest in the policy. Bold or stupid? I pick stupid because education is not a touchstone issue for anyone other than those with children. It isn’t even in the top five issues that voters are concerned about.

What is a top issue, is the economy and anything attached to it, like the rising cost of living. James Carville, Bill Clinton’s strategic advisor coined the phrase it’s “the economy, stupid” during Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential campaign against incumbent George H. W. Bush. His phrase was directed at the campaign’s workers and intended as one of three messages for them to focus on.

Point of Order: Hipkins shows his quality as PM in securing a bounce for Labour, but now comes the hard part

Chris Hipkins has surprised even some of his closest friends and backers with the bounce he has secured for Labour in public polls since he became Prime Minister. He has been put to the test since he took over from Jacinda Ardern in the top job, and has shown a quality that was well hidden in his previous portfolios.

It’s not just the long hours he is putting into the job, but projecting the human touch to those hard hit by Cyclone Gabrielle, or the other disasters of recent weeks as well. Then this week he was steering the government in decisions which, as he said, will enable pensioners to start seeing a bit extra in their bank accounts from next month.

Point of Order: Hipkins enthuses about the Fourth National Action Plan......

.....but who remembers the first three?

Just two statements had been posted on the Beehive website, when we made our daily check this morning. This suggested the PM and her ministers were easing up on their workloads as Christmas Day nears.

But two more statements have been posted since then, one of them grandly headlined: