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Dear John, A favourite part of my job is getting around New Zealand, meeting people where they work, learning about what they do and hearing their concerns. The top four worries wherever I go? Rising prices, rising mortgage interest rates, access to health care, and a massive shortage of workers. These are all things a competent government could make better, and National has a plan to do exactly that. It was no surprise that when National invited people to vote on Labour’s biggest failure of its five years in government, 23,000 people picked the cost-of-living crisis. It really is touching everything, and affecting everybody. National has a plan to ease the cost-of-living crisis. Labour doesn’t. I read this Stuff article yesterday about a Hutt Valley man who bought a house with his flatmate about a year ago, and now he’s facing rapidly rising mortgage interest rates and was quoted as saying, “It’s the anxiety of what’s going to be happening, because my pay isn’t going up. It’s just – I don’t know what’s going to happen.” I really feel for this guy and the thousands of others in his situation. I am worried by the stress it’s causing inside people’s homes and, as more and more people re-fix their mortgages, this stress will spread – which the Reserve Bank acknowledged this week when it said first home buyers were the most vulnerable. The Government may trumpet very low unemployment, but that’s only part of the story of New Zealand’s economy at the moment. Many New Zealanders are now struggling to hang on to the homes they bought with such hope for the future. Some of the stories will be heart-breaking. This week, I spent a day in Hawke’s Bay and loved meeting the Patel family and the team at Shires, which is a retail stalwart in Dannevirke’s main street. In 1922, Chhibabhai Pancha Patel a recent migrant from India, was passing through Dannevirke when he saw a shop that he thought would make a good greengrocer’s. He was right. But in a sign of the times, when he started the business he changed his name to Bill Shire, and called the store W Shire & Co, because of the racism against immigrants. Today, his family, including grandsons Peter and Suresh Patel and their team, keep fresh produce turning over for their customers, as the store has done for 100 years. Great work, Shires!
The latest edition of the Australian Women’s Weekly New Zealand has a feature on Amanda and me at home. The Women’s Weekly team were complete professionals to deal with and I can say that I never expected to be on a magazine cover with Rachel Hunter! Finally, I’m off to the Women’s Rugby World Cup semi-finals in Auckland this weekend. There have already been some great games and now that the teams are at the sharp end of this competition, I’m really looking forward to watching tomorrow night’s match. Go the Black Ferns! Have a great weekend, |
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