In the wake of the recent challenge to Christopher
Luxon’s leadership of the National Party, the Facebook
page NZ Observer published a post headed “NO
ONE CAN FIX THE MESS NEW ZEALAND IS IN”. It dismissed
the cost-of-living crisis as a phrase invented by the media
and blamed an assortment of former and current politicians,
migration, debt and “money printing” for our supposed
decline.
It arrived dressed as hard-headed realism,
and some of it was tempting to believe. I am a pensioner
living on a small farm in the Tararua district. I buy
groceries, pay rates, watch power bills climb and see public
services becoming harder to reach. I do not need a
journalist to tell me that many New Zealanders are
struggling. We meet the cost-of-living crisis at the
supermarket checkout and whenever another ordinary necessity
quietly wanders out of financial reach.
But the more I
questioned the post’s claims, the less convincing its
central message became. It mixed genuine problems with
selective figures, personal accusations and a great deal of
certainty unsupported by evidence. Most troubling of all was
its insistence that there are no solutions.
That is
not realism. It is fatalism — and fatalism is politically
useful because it teaches us to accept whatever cuts,
inequalities or deterioration we are given.
The
cost-of-living crisis is real
Advertisement – scroll to continue reading
Calling the
cost-of-living crisis fictitious does not make it disappear
in a puff of political smoke. Stats NZ reported that
household living costs rose 3.2 percent in the year to June
2026. The broader Consumers Price Index rose 4.1 percent
over the same period. These figures do not wear a red
rosette or a blue one. They track what households
pay.
Inflation easing from an earlier peak does not
mean prices return to where they were. It means they are
increasing more slowly. A family whose food, rent, insurance
and electricity have already jumped substantially does not
experience a falling inflation rate as a refund.
Nor
does the burden fall evenly. Mortgage holders, renters,
beneficiaries, superannuitants and higher-income households
buy different things and face different pressures. That is
precisely why Stats NZ publishes household living-cost
measures as well as the CPI.
We can argue about which
policies contributed to inflation and which government
responded best. We cannot reasonably argue that the pressure
itself was invented by journalists.
Debt matters —
but the numbers need context
New Zealand’s
government debt has risen sharply since before the pandemic.
That deserves serious attention, not denial. At 30 April
2026, net core Crown debt stood at $190.3 billion, or 42.8
percent of GDP. Treasury’s Budget 2026 forecasts expect it
to peak at 46.1 percent of GDP in 2027/28 before gradually
declining. A number as large as $190.3 billion can stampede
around Facebook quite impressively; the percentage of GDP
helps tell us what it actually means.
Those figures
are sobering. They are not evidence that the country is
insolvent or beyond repair. Treasury has also observed that
New Zealand’s debt remains below the historically elevated
levels of several major economies. The OECD nevertheless
warns that ageing, weak productivity and continued deficits
require us to rebuild fiscal room for future
shocks.
Both things can be true: our debt position is
a real long-term challenge, and claims of national ruin are
exaggerated.
It is also misleading to describe every
borrowed dollar as though it vanished into the pockets of a
few named politicians. Governments borrowed during a
once-in-a-century pandemic to fund wage subsidies, health
measures and support intended to prevent widespread business
failure and unemployment. The Auditor-General has identified
weaknesses in preparedness, administration and
accountability that should be learned from. Scrutiny is
justified. Unsupported allegations of personal financial
gain are not a substitute for it.
Debt did not begin
with one government, and it did not stop changing when that
government left office. Today’s coalition inherited
deficits, but it also makes its own choices about tax
reductions, spending cuts, borrowing and investment.
Treasury’s current forecast says debt will continue rising
for a time under this Government. Fiscal responsibility
cannot mean blaming every increase on predecessors and
claiming ownership only when the numbers
improve.
“Money printing” is not the whole
story
“Money printing” has become a handy
two-word cudgel, but it is not much of an explanation. The
Reserve Bank’s pandemic-era Large Scale Asset Purchase
programme involved purchasing government and
local-government bonds in the secondary market. The Reserve
Bank says it helped restore a dysfunctional bond market and
lowered interest rates during an extraordinary
crisis.
The programme also carried substantial costs
and risks. Those deserve examination, and the Reserve Bank
itself has reviewed the lessons. But it is not accurate to
treat the programme as a secret political slush fund or to
attribute every later price rise to that one decision. New
Zealand was also affected by disrupted global supply chains,
energy and commodity prices, labour shortages, domestic
demand, housing costs, fiscal support and the worldwide
consequences of the pandemic.
Complex events rarely
have one villain waiting in the wings. Economics is not a
pantomime, and any post offering us a neat cast of heroes
and rogues should make us cautious.
Migration is not
an all-purpose scapegoat
Rapid population growth can
strain housing, schools, hospitals, roads and council
infrastructure when governments fail to plan for it. New
Zealand has repeatedly allowed immigration settings and
infrastructure investment to wander down separate roads.
That is a policy failure worth discussing. Migration,
however, should not become the crowbar used to prise every
difficult issue into the same argument.
But migrants
are also nurses, doctors, builders, farm workers, teachers,
business owners and taxpayers. Many services struggling with
population pressure also depend on migrant labour to
function. Meanwhile, Stats NZ recorded a net loss of 36,800
New Zealand citizens in the year to May 2026. Our migration
story is more complicated than simply saying too many
outsiders arrived.
The question should be whether
migration is planned, sustainable and matched by housing and
infrastructure — not which group of people can most
conveniently be blamed.
Austerity is a choice, not a
law of nature
When we are told there is no money and
no alternative, the proposed answer is usually cuts. Some
spending should undoubtedly be reviewed. Waste exists,
programmes should be evaluated, and governments should be
able to explain what public money achieves.
Yet
cutting services can shift costs rather than remove them.
The ledger may look tidier, but the bill has not vanished;
it has merely slid into another column. Delayed medical care
becomes more serious and expensive. Deferred maintenance
produces larger repair bills. Inadequate housing increases
health and social costs. Under-investment in climate
resilience leaves communities facing greater recovery bills
after floods, storms and droughts.
Treasury’s own
2026 Budget Policy Statement acknowledged the trade-off:
sharper fiscal consolidation could improve debt forecasts,
but additional savings could damage frontline services and
further weaken demand. That is not an argument for unlimited
spending. It is an admission that there are choices and
consequences.
There are solutions — just no
painless ones
No responsible person can promise a
secret fund or an effortless rescue. New Zealand faces low
productivity, expensive housing, infrastructure deficits, an
ageing population, climate risk and a narrow tax base.
Addressing those problems will take years and will require
more honesty than an election slogan.
But
“difficult” is not the same as “impossible”. We can
debate a broader and fairer tax base, including how lightly
some forms of wealth and property gains are treated compared
with wages. We can invest more consistently in housing and
infrastructure instead of lurching between announcements and
cancellations. We can evaluate spending rigorously without
assuming that every public servant or public service is
waste. We can align migration with workforce needs, housing
and regional capacity. We can support productivity through
skills, research, technology, energy resilience and
businesses that create lasting value rather than relying so
heavily on rising land prices.
We can also demand
long-term planning that survives a change of government.
Constantly dismantling one administration’s work so the
next can begin again is expensive, demoralising and deeply
unproductive.
The OECD’s 2026 assessment is not
cheerful, but neither is it hopeless. It calls for fiscal
repair alongside reforms that lift productivity and growth.
The Climate Change Commission similarly argues that acting
earlier on major risks can reduce the much larger cost of
delayed adaptation.
The argument we should be
having
I am not an economist, and I do not pretend to
have a complete prescription for the country. I am an
ordinary New Zealander who became uneasy when a confident
political post told me there were no answers and that
decline was inevitable.
We should challenge
governments of both the left and the right. We should
question debt, demand evidence for spending, expose waste
and insist on competent administration. We should also
question stories that fling frightening totals at us without
context, turn migrants into scapegoats, make grave
allegations without proof and present a preferred political
programme as the only possible reality.
New Zealand is
not fine. Too many people are struggling, too many services
are stretched and too many difficult decisions have been
postponed. But we are not powerless, bankrupt or condemned
to decline.
The real question is not whether anyone
can fix New Zealand overnight. Nobody can. It is whether we
are willing to make careful, evidence-based choices over
time — and whether the burden of those choices will be
shared fairly.
What kind of New Zealand do we want to
build from here, and who do we want it to work for? That is
the honest conversation we need.
Sources checked for
this draft
These links are supplied for
fact-checking and editorial review; an editor may choose a
different citation treatment.
• NZ
Observer — “NO ONE CAN FIX THE MESS NEW ZEALAND IS IN”
(Facebook post, August 2026)
• Stats
NZ — Household living-costs price indexes: June 2026
quarter
• Stats
NZ — Consumers price index: June 2026
quarter
• The
Treasury — Interim Financial Statements, ten months ended
30 April 2026
• The
Treasury — Budget Economic and Fiscal Update
2026
• The
Treasury — Bending two curves: New Zealand’s intertwined
economic and fiscal challenges
• OECD
— Economic Survey of New Zealand 2026
• Reserve
Bank of New Zealand — Monetary policy tools and the RBNZ
balance sheet
• Office
of the Auditor-General — Crisis response and
recovery
• Stats
NZ — International migration: May 2026
• The
Treasury — Budget Policy Statement 2026
• Climate
Change Commission — Acting now can reduce New Zealand’s
rising recovery costs
Lynne
Samkin is a pensioner, dog breeder and small-farm owner
living in the Tararua district. She holds a Bachelor of
Computing Systems and writes from the perspective of an
ordinary New Zealander interested in how political and
economic decisions are experienced beyond
Wellington.
