Chris Hipkins

And that's going to inflict a lot of pain on a lot of people.

I totally agree with that.

Look, I, I still like to go and do my own shopping and I do it at Pack and Save in Upper Hutt.

And I've noticed a difference in the last two or three years.

There's always been families who have lived pretty close to the edge in terms of being able to balance their budgets.

Then I've watched them in the supermarket and they'll get to the checkout and they might put back a bottle of wine that they had for a Friday night treat, or they might put back some chocolate or some ice cream or whatever.

Now they're putting back stuff that's pretty basic.

You know, they'll be putting back a packet of Weet-Bix in order to make things add up on the grocery tally or a block of cheese or a block of butter.

And that's a real sign for me that things have changed even more in the last few years.

So, yep, people were getting to the checkout and being really careful, you know, about making sure that it stacked up.

But there's more people now.

It's not that they're not being careful.

It's just that they, even just for the basics, they can't make that stack up.

So I still try and get out and about to see as much of that firsthand as I can, because I realize as a politician, you can live in a little bit of a bubble.

You can be removed from that.

You know, there's a lot of families who are ending up needing to go and get food parcels, even though they've got two parents who work full time.

That's just wrong.

You know, if you have got two parents working full time, you should be able to not just live, not just afford the basics, you should be able to live comfortably on that.

But the fact that even with two full time incomes, you're still reliant on having to go to a food bank, that's just wrong.

It says that the economy is out of whack.