COST OF LIVING CRISIS? WHAT COST OF LIVING CRISIS?

 

In the space of one year, the combined wealth of New Zealand's 150 richest individuals and families has surged to nearly $130 billion, up from $102 billion last year. At top of the big pile of cash and assets sit toy manufacturers Nick and Matt Mowbray. In 2023 Nick Mowbray donated $100,000 to the ACT Party's election campaign. He's accused New Zealand of being a country "made up of many whiners and losers with their hands out."

WHILE MOST OF us are tightening our belts, skipping meals, or watching our pay packets evaporate before the week is out, life has never been better for New Zealand’s richest elite. The latest NBR Rich List makes that painfully clear. The combined wealth of the country’s 150 richest individuals and families has surged to around $129 billion, up from $102 billion just a year earlier. In 2024 it was $95.68 billion, itself a sharp rise from $72.59 billion in 2023. There are twenty-six billionaires on the list, up from eighteen last year. In a country where foodbanks are overwhelmed and families are living out of cars, the richest New Zealanders are not just doing well — they are thriving at a pace that defies the economic reality facing everyone else.

At the top of this gilded pyramid sit brothers Nick and Mat Mowbray, whose fortune comes from plastic, non-biodegradable toys manufactured in Chinese factories by low-paid workers. Their company’s success has made them the poster children of New Zealand’s new hyper-wealthy class. Nick Mowbray, in particular, has not been shy about using his wealth to shape politics. In 2023, he donated $100,000 to the ACT Party’s election campaign, a party that has consistently championed policies that benefit the wealthy while demanding “discipline” and “tough choices” from everyone else.

And when David Seymour’s cut-price school lunch scheme came under heavy criticism for leaving hungry children worse off, Nick Mowbray took to X to sneer at those who dared to object. “This school lunch thing is so pathetic — this country is made up of so many whiners and losers with their hands out,” he wrote. It was a moment of rare honesty from the elite: contempt for the poor dressed up as common sense, delivered by someone whose wealth depends on cheap labour, environmental degradation, and a political system that protects his interests.

But while it’s good times for Nick, Mat, and others like them, it has been brutally hard going for everyone else. A cost-of-living crisis, combined with the Government’s austerity agenda, has produced a perfect storm of rising unemployment, deepening poverty, and growing homelessness. Families who once lived comfortably are now juggling overdue bills. Workers who once felt secure are now one restructure away from disaster. Foodbanks, already stretched, are reporting record demand. Social service providers describe levels of desperation they have not seen in decades.

And yet, despite this widespread hardship, the political establishment remains united in its loyalty to the very economic system that created the crisis. National and Labour may trade blows over whose spreadsheets add up better, but when it comes to an unquestioning faith in market solutions — they are in lockstep. Their disagreements are cosmetic. Their shared ideology is not.

This is why nothing changes. This is why the gap between rich and poor widens every year. This is why the wealthy accumulate fortunes at a rate that defies belief while ordinary people are told to “tighten their belts” and “make better choices.” The system is working exactly as designed: to funnel wealth upward, to protect the interests of those who already have more than enough, and to discipline those who have the least.

The cost-of-living crisis did not fall from the sky. It is the predictable outcome of decades of policies that prioritised profit over people, deregulation over fairness, and private wealth over public good. Austerity is not an unfortunate necessity — it is a political choice. And it is a choice that has inflicted enormous harm on working people while shielding the wealthy from any meaningful contribution to the society that made their fortunes possible.

The Mowbray brothers are not an aberration. They are the logical product of an economic model that rewards exploitation, celebrates excess, and treats inequality as a sign of success rather than failure. Their rise is not a story of innovation or hard work; it is a story of a system tilted so heavily in favour of capital that wealth accumulates almost automatically at the top.

But here is the uncomfortable truth: nothing will change until there is a fundamental redistribution of wealth and power. Not a tweak, not a minor adjustment, not a slightly better tax system — a structural shift. Until we put people before profit, until we recognise that an economy should serve the public rather than the other way around, we will remain trapped in this cycle of crisis, inequality, and political stagnation.

Unfortunately, neither of the major parties shows any appetite for such a transformation. National and Labour remain committed to managing the status quo, not challenging it. They offer different styles of leadership but the same economic orthodoxy. They debate the margins while ignoring the core. They promise stability while delivering stagnation. And the Green Party is tagging along behind Labour.

New Zealanders deserve better than this. They deserve a political vision that acknowledges the scale of the crisis and responds with ambition rather than timidity. They deserve leaders who understand that inequality is not inevitable, that poverty is not a personal failing, and that wealth concentrated in the hands of a few is a threat to democracy itself.

Until that vision emerges — and until people demand it — the rich will continue to prosper, the poor will continue to struggle, and the political establishment will continue to pretend that tinkering around the edges is enough. It isn’t. It never was.