Minute details never got in the way of Mike’s Minute
If governments take the credit when prices fall, they must wear the blame when prices rise.
When things go right, Mike Hosking hands the credit to John Key or Christopher Luxon. When things go wrong, they were nowhere near it.
His latest Mike’s Minute does not disappoint. Dismissing Kieran McAnulty’s claim that families are $6000 a year worse off, Hosking insists governments don’t control food, petrol, power, rates or healthcare.
Minute details. Let’s check them.
Start with power. Electricity was once a state monopoly. National’s 1998 reforms split ECNZ into competing generators. John Key’s government then sold 49 per cent of Meridian, Mercury and Genesis, but kept 51 per cent.
Household power now costs about 60 per cent more in real terms than before the reforms. Since partial privatisation, the gentailers have paid $13.73 billion in dividends — double what they invested. The Crown banks the biggest cheque. Farmers, who use far more power than households, brace for the biggest increases.
Hosking even blames Labour’s oil and gas exploration ban for the spot price. So governments do move power prices — just never National ones.
Rates? Councils set them, but Wellington writes the rulebook — and mayors say water and wastewater drive rates up.
In 2022, Simon Watts joined the Taxpayers’ Union roadshow to stop Three Waters, the reform meant to lift those costs off ratepayers. Now Local Government Minister, he has announced a rates cap that officials say will save the average household just $34 a year. It excludes water charges, removes none of the regulation, and doesn’t bite until 2029. Even the Taxpayers’ Union now blames Watts for record hikes.
Food? Its inputs are land, soil, water, air, sun and energy. Only the sun escapes regulation. Regional councils police soil, water and air quality under rules Wellington writes. In January, the Government stripped Class 3 soils from the highly productive land protections. Heinz Wattie’s says gas prices have tripled in seven years, and McCain is closing its Hastings plant. When farmers compete with developers for soil, and pay rising rates and power bills, the cost lands at the checkout.
Petrol, says Hosking, is the war. Yet the Government collects more than $1.20 a litre in excise, levies and GST — including GST on its own excise. And on his own Newstalk ZB show, Z Energy’s chief executive was asked why crude fell from about $210 to $192 a barrel while pump prices climbed from $3.15 to more than $3.50.
The war matters too. Luxon set the election for 7 November — four days after the US midterms. Donald Trump has just eased sanctions on Russian diesel to cut prices before Americans vote. As I argued in September, the hand on our pump is in the Oval Office. Luxon is counting on it.
Healthcare? “Public health is free,” says Hosking. A GP visit isn’t. Health New Zealand sets capitation funding and caps fee rises; when it underfunded practices, it let them lift fees up to 7.76 per cent. Now, RNZ reports, it proposes freezing GP fees until July 2027. If the Government doesn’t control the price, how can it freeze it?
Then there is Key. He promised to close the income gap with Australia by 2025. On paper, the gap narrowed from 32 to 24 per cent. But much of our growth was simply more people. GDP per head fell 4.6 per cent from September 2022 to mid-2024 while migration propped up the headline figure.
Strip out population growth, land speculation and inflation, and the economy has been going backwards.
So much of what households pay is owned, taxed, set or regulated by the state. Politicians who bank the credit for falling prices must own the rising ones.
Sixty seconds is enough to dismiss a cost-of-living crisis. It isn’t enough to pay for one.
