OPINION: Lynne Samkin
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
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.
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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.
About The Author: 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.
This was first published by RNZ News
