Here in Australia, we’re currently battling multiple cost-of-living crises: house prices, rents, fuel, food, electricity… How bad is Jacinda Ardern’s New Zealand, if our crises seem like a land of milk and honey by comparison?
The cost of living crisis under Jacinda Ardern’s government in New Zealand has become so bad that Kiwis are moving to Australia to save money.
One New Zealand man, Dmitro Mikalshevskiy, swapped his homeland for Australia in November, 2021 and claims he and his partner are now $2,000 a month better off.
Mr Mikalshevskiy told Discovery NZ he decided to move to Melbourne when he was left struggling to afford beers with mates in Auckland without having to work additional hours.
Gosh, it must be bad in NZ, right?
Except… hang on a minute.
‘When we were living in Auckland we had everything we wanted, the house, the beautiful cars and the great friends but it got to a point where we were living right up to the edge of our means,’ Mr Mikalshevskiy said […]
He said he is so satisfied with the move to Australia he has put an offer on an apartment in Southbank.
The house, the beautiful cars: neither of those things comes cheap at the best of times.
Nor do apartments in Southbank: think Viaduct Basin or Princes Wharf. In fact, houses in Melbourne are staggeringly expensive. The median house price in Melbourne is NZ$ 1,337,000, compared to Auckland’s $1,156,000. A three bedroom apartment in Southbank might seem cheap by comparison, at $NZD 969,500, but remember that you’ll be living in a high-class tower block — and a lot of your neighbours will be AirBnBs rented out to partygoers.
Let’s not even get started on Sydney: median house price NZ$ 3,198,000.
Still, it’s true that petrol is currently much cheaper than in NZ, but that’s a relative thing. When we’ve become conditioned to remarking that $2 per litre is “cheap”, something has clearly gone very wrong. It’s also true that inflation in Jacindaland is outstripping inflation in Alboland by two percentage points. But little Albo’s only got started. Give it a few years, especially with the Teals and Greens dictating policy, and Mr Mikalshevskiy might start pinin’ for the fjords of Milford Sound.
Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that the New Zealand economy is deep in the hole, right now — and none of it is looking good for Jacinda Ardern.
As David Farrar argues, Ardern’s strongest vote has always been with women — and cost of living issues are a much bigger factor for female voters.
‘Twice as many women as men say the cost of living is the biggest issue. That’s where she’s losing.’
Daily Mail
Ardern can prattle about “kindness” and hug as many people in Nelson as she likes, but when families are sitting around the kitchen table trying to figure out how to pay the bills, there’s one person they’ll blame.
