Butter prices for a 500g block have jumped from $4.50 to $8.42 since 2023. Unemployment sits at an eight-year high of 5.3%. Property prices have fallen but our homes remain among the least affordable in the developed world, costing up to nine times the average household income.<\/p>\n
\u201cKids sleeping under laundry because there\u2019s no blankets,\u201d community leader Dave Letele says. \u201cThe gap between haves and have-nots has never been bigger.\u201d<\/p>\n
Economist Shamubeel Eaqub told The Elephant that the country\u2019s \u201crolling maul\u201d of crises, from Covid to cyclones to inflation, has left deep scars. \u201cThere\u2019s a big chunk of New Zealanders doing it really tough,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd they\u2019re doing it tougher than before.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clinical psychologist Jacqui Maguire says mental wellbeing data back that up. \u201cAbout a third of New Zealand adults experience anxiety or depression weekly \u2013 that\u2019s up from 25% five years ago. Data doesn\u2019t lie. People feel broken.\u201d<\/p>\n
A record number of more than 70,000 New Zealanders left last year, many of them young and skilled. Among them was Professor Michael Bunce, the former chief scientist at the Department of Conservation, who says he felt \u201cchewed up and spat out\u201d by the science system. \u201cYou can\u2019t just turn science off and expect it to come back,\u201d Bunce says.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s not all gloomy. ANZ\u2019s chief economist Richard Yetsenga points out that even after a tough few years, New Zealand remains \u201cone of the wealthiest economies on Earth\u201d, with a strong government balance sheet and comparatively low unemployment.<\/p>\n
Refugee Marwa Ali, now studying here from Afghanistan, calls Aotearoa \u201cthe land of opportunity\u201d, while comedian Jeremy Corbett and others remind us that for all its challenges, this is still one of the most peaceful, free nations on the planet.<\/p>\n
So, is New Zealand truly broken or just bruised?<\/p>\n
As Letele puts it: \u201cWe\u2019ve been knocked down plenty of times. The question now is whether we\u2019ve still got the heart to get back up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watch, listen and join the conversation \u2013 new episodes drop every Thursday across digital, social, and broadcast platforms. The Elephant is made with the support of NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Butter prices for a 500g block have jumped from $4.50 to $8.42 since 2023. Unemployment sits at an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[617,98708,64,63,78787,41265,1018,26181,154974,154969,34990,154973,25095,71300,120603,154965,154968,5276,16812,154970,154971,20869,16371,1460,8117,56954,154963,22625,611,154972,58668,3127,154967,445,59906,128,7452,9672,1667,154964,2177,36463,154966,9501,320,19004,142414,446,14850,338,3205,114367],"class_list":["post-264848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-and","tag-asks","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-avoid","tag-beyond","tag-big","tag-broken","tag-bruised","tag-chambers","tag-conversations","tag-crysell","tag-dave","tag-debate","tag-dives","tag-eaqub","tag-echo","tag-elephant","tag-episode","tag-fearless","tag-honest","tag-hosts","tag-into","tag-is","tag-just","tag-kamo","tag-letele","tag-looking","tag-mark","tag-miriama","tag-nation","tag-new","tag-often","tag-online","tag-questions","tag-science","tag-search","tag-series","tag-seven","tag-shamubeel","tag-state","tag-tackle","tag-tackles","tag-that","tag-the","tag-this","tag-uncomfortable","tag-video","tag-week","tag-wildlife","tag-zealand","tag-zealanders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}