Any political party that ignores the things that really matter to the voting public is a political party destined for losses. Right now the things that matter to New Zealand voters the most are: inflation/cost of living, housing costs, crime/law-and-order, and healthcare and hospitals.

Inflation and cost of living continue to be ranked as the most important issue facing New Zealand, a new report has found.

The Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor, released on Sunday, asks New Zealanders what they are most concerned about and analyses how this changes over time. A total 1002 respondents were interviewed online in February and were asked, among other things, what the three most important issues facing New Zealand today were.

Concern for inflation is 7 per cent higher than the previous report released in September and is sitting at 65 per cent, Ipsos said. Although concern for inflation is lower among people who are retired, at just 52 per cent.

“Concern for inflation/cost of living continues to climb, with roughly two in three New Zealanders considering it to be a top issue they are facing today,” the Ipsos report said. “This is the highest level of any issue since surveying began in 2018.”

Housing and the prices of houses, as well as crime and law and order, are in second-equal place. The level of concern for housing remains unchanged since September’s report, still sitting at 33 per cent, while concern for crime is up two per cent to 33 per cent.

And in fourth-equal place is healthcare and hospitals, which is down five percent from the previous report to 27 per cent, and climate change, which is sitting at 27 per cent.

Newshub

Climate change rounded out the top five, but as you can see from previous years this has never been a top-five issue. It is only an issue now because the survey was taken in the wake of the flooding in Auckland and Cyclone Gabrielle.

In all the other areas of concern, the government has been responsible for those areas getting out of control, particularly with inflation and crime.

The current Labour Government was elected to solve the housing crisis that they stirred up in the media. The issue remains the second most important issue, but they have achieved little in building new houses or making housing more affordable, other than crashing the property market and destroying people’s wealth at the same time. If Labour is the answer to solving the housing crisis, as is claimed by the survey, then people really haven’t been paying attention.

With the cyclone disaster and the mammoth task of rebuilding, you are going to see even more billions of government spending, which will further exacerbate the inflation issue.

The next survey will be interesting because we are going to see food prices explode and shortages get worse in the wake of the destruction of New Zealand’s fruit bowl in the Hawke’s Bay region. No amount of government spending is going to solve that.

The four main issues and the failure of this government to alleviate these should see them turfed from office. If only we had an opposition that focussed on the top four instead of attacking their own members on the fifth issue.

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As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news,...