“With 10,000 more children relying on charity and families unable to put food on the table, the human cost of inflation has never been more evident in New Zealand,” says ACT Leader David Seymour.

“Kidscan reports it is feeding 10,000 more hungry students than it was at the beginning of the year, with hunger and poverty the worst the charity has ever seen.

“As household budgets stretch families across New Zealand are having to ask themselves whether to pay rent or buy food, this is the result of Labour’s economic mismanagement.

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

“Any pretence of careful economic management was abandoned long ago. In the past financial year the Government spent $151 billion, $17 billion more than the year prior. Inflation is too much money chasing after too few goods, and this Government has borrowed, printed and spent too much money.

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

“Finance Minister Grant Robertson’s insistence on a dual target helped to encourage irresponsible monetary policy, which subsidised bad government policy.

“There’s always a human cost to this sort of economic mismanagement, and sadly we are seeing it play out across New Zealand households.

“The next government will need to clean up Labour’s mess. ACT has a plan to do so and these ideas and more are laid out in ACT’s paper New Zealand’s Cost of Living Crisis.”

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