to the Ipsos survey<\/a>, inflation\/the cost of living continues to be the top issue for New Zealanders, as it has been for four years now, with 59% of participants identifying it. <\/p>\nLabour is viewed as the party most capable of managing the cost of living by 35% of participants, down from 36% in the survey conducted last October. <\/p>\n
National is making some headway, however, with 28% backing the centre-right party. That\u2019s up from 24% late last year, closing the gap with Labour from 12 points to seven. <\/p>\n
On the survey results, showing Labour was trusted more on the cost-of-living, Willis said it was too soon to make that conclusion. She criticised Labour for not proposing many policies yet. <\/p>\n
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon this morning said it had been a \u201ctough time\u201d and still was for many New Zealanders. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you have had years of high inflation, the issue is, even though we have got inflation in the band, people still feel life is expensive. Those prices have been baked in. The inflation from previous years is baked in.\u201d <\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t think the answer was returning to the Labour Party. <\/p>\n
Luxon, the National leader, said despite some positive indicators, like rising business and consumer confidence, \u201cpeople still need to feel it and I think that is what people are playing back\u201d. <\/p>\n
![\"National]()
National is behind on the majority of key issues. Photo \/ Michael Craig<\/p>\n
NZ First leader Winston Peters has previously acknowledged the Government hadn\u2019t turned the economy around as quickly as it should have. <\/p>\n
He told RNZ last year: \u201cWe know we have got a situation where we haven\u2019t turned the economy around in the way we should have, as fast as we should have. <\/p>\n
\u201cI know it can be turned around, but not with this sort of strategy where you\u2019re not actually fixing the economy, you\u2019re just getting rid of assets.\u201d <\/p>\n
In a speech last September, Peters said the Government inherited an \u201ceconomic tanker\u201d that was \u201con autopilot heading for disaster\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Government was given the wheel with the expectation to turn it off its wayward course,\u201d Peters said at the time. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes time to turn around the \u2018economic tanker\u2019 the Labour Party left this government. It is imperative we get our economy pointing in the right direction \u2013 and we are. The difficulty cannot be understated.\u201d <\/p>\n
Jamie Ensor is the NZ Herald\u2019s Chief Political Reporter, based in the Press Gallery at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub Press Gallery office. He was a finalist in 2025 for Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI think that they are impatient.\u201d Challenged by Bridge on her language, Willis said she had \u201csympathy\u201d for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[10968,36577,64,63,17356,99,167711,164,256755,4268,201823,186,580,3786,256754,158904,13468,50029,40589,3127,73162,11509,4215,112289,117261,73163,256756,36434,32388,114367],"class_list":{"0":"post-512996","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-10968","9":"tag-are","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-away","13":"tag-business","14":"tag-costofliving","15":"tag-economy","16":"tag-electing","17":"tag-election","18":"tag-expecting","19":"tag-finance","20":"tag-for","21":"tag-government","22":"tag-impatient","23":"tag-labelled","24":"tag-labour","25":"tag-minister","26":"tag-nationals","27":"tag-new","28":"tag-nicola","29":"tag-quick","30":"tag-says","31":"tag-straight","32":"tag-turnaround","33":"tag-willis","34":"tag-wipe","35":"tag-would","36":"tag-years","37":"tag-zealanders"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512996","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=512996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}