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a cork board with a defalted baloon, some chocolate bar wrappers , a picture of adrian orr and confetti
A moodboard for a end of inflation party (Image: The Spinoff)

PoliticsJuly 3, 2024

How to host the ‘inflation is over’ party of your dreams

a cork board with a defalted baloon, some chocolate bar wrappers , a picture of adrian orr and confetti
A moodboard for a end of inflation party (Image: The Spinoff)

Inflation is over – at least according to one business survey – so it’s time to celebrate! Shanti Mathias and Joel MacManus present a guide to hosting a no-more-inflation party. 

For many years (or since the end of 2020), inflation has been a scourge in the New Zealand economy. 

It reached a 30-year high in 2022, much like instances of people researching how to do a RAT test, burning down the parliament slide, and pretending to care about Queen Elizabeth II. 

Adrian Orr, the head of the reserve bank, told everyone to “cool their jets”. He pleaded with us to stop spending money, and we collectively laughed in his face as we ordered dumplings on UberEats, euphoric from low interest rates and stimulus money. 

We kept hearing about the CPI. Everyone got sick of talking about “the economy” and started talking about the “cost of living crisis” instead. Sadly, this new name didn’t make the experience of buying three small things in the supermarket for $30 much more enjoyable for many people. 

But at long last, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Obituary writers have their pens poised. Inflation has been beaten! 

Reports of inflation’s murder come from a business survey published by NZIBR (the New Zealand Institute of Business Research).  The Quarterly Survey of Business Opinions asks people who run companies what they’re thinking about, if they’re intending to lift prices of goods they sell and if they’re feeling OK. Stephen Toplis, BNZ’s head of research, wrote a note about it with the heading “QSBO says inflation beaten” (that’s according to Dan Brunskill of interest.co.nz, who has consistently been reporting on the inflation beat). The results of the survey have several people calling for interest rates to be cut sooner than the current forecast of next year – maybe, like, November? 

The inflation figure or inflation rate measures the changing price of goods and services bought by households in New Zealand – and it reached 7.2% at one point (Image: Archi Banal)

Economists got somewhat excited about this, with Kiwibank’s economics team saying “the inflation dragon has been slain, we’re just waiting for it to hit the turf.” Wow! This truly is a momentous moment, an occasional occasion and a celebratory celebration. 

Now, different people choose to recognise the end of inflation at different times. Maybe a quarterly business survey is enough for you; maybe you want to wait for the next consumer price index to see if prices really aren’t rising as much as they were. Or maybe you love to ride the winds of chance, and want to wait for the divining powers of the Reserve Bank to actually announce that interest rates are dropping. 

Whatever the end of inflation means to you, we at The Spinoff want to ensure you can observe it in the style the occasion demands. So here’s a quick guide to hosting an “inflation is over” party so everyone you love (and two finance ministers) can celebrate together.

Guests 

Adrian Orr: make sure you tell the Reserve Bank governor how grateful you are for his work. If you own your house, he’d love to hear about how much interest you’re paying on your mortgage, or some of the expensive purchases you chose not to make as a soldier in the war against inflation. 

Wacky Waving Inflatable Tube Guy: Let your jets run hot in front of Orr while you spend $223.20 on this Pink 20ft Dancing Air Puppet with Flailing Arms, the friendliest inflatable thing you’ll ever meet. 

Your landlord: Now that inflation is over, your landlord will no longer be forced to increase your rent. What a relief that must be for them!

Grant Robertson and Nicola Willis: They’ll be needed for the entertainment section (see below). 

NOT INVITED: Whichever Act Party staffer wrote this terrible joke.

green background wit scales, coins on one sideand a briefcase on the other
The Reserve Bank is meant to keep employment and inflation in balance (Image: Archi Banal)

Entertainment 

The Canal-corridor Game: Remember that time a really big boat got jammed in the Suez canal when it was full of all the stuff we were buying while we were causing inflation? This game is a great way to remember that occasion, while also making the most of the small flat which is the only one you can afford because of price increases. In the narrowest corridor of your house (assuming you haven’t had to turn it into a bedroom), one guest stands in the middle, playing the role of “Ever Given”. The other guests, holding as many objects as possible (ideally from a pre-party shopping spree), try to get past, while the Ever Given attempts to stop them. The person holding the most stuff at the end of the corridor wins. 

Pin the Tail on Australian Inflation: This is a fun comparison game! Guests take turns being blindfolded. The blindfolded person is given a pin you’ve prepared, marked with different dates and their inflation data. (September 2021 – 4.9%, that kind of thing). On a corkboard graph you’ve set up (try one of these from Kmart and paint) with the percentage change of inflation on the vertical axis and the quarter on the horizontal axis, you try to guess Australia’s inflation rate at the same time. If New Zealand is higher, the non-blindfolded guests boo; if New Zealand is lower, everyone cheers. 

For a high-risk twist on this classic inflation game, blindfold everyone at once and let them loose in front of the corkboard. Any injuries sustained will be a nostalgic reminder of the prickle of fear experienced when checking your bank account during the high inflation years. 

Arm wrestling: Make the current and former minister of finance arm wrestle. The winner must acknowledge that it’s their party that is responsible for the economic burden high inflation has placed on New Zealand families. 

a group of mourners gather
If inflation is dead, why are we at the wake? Because we’re celebrating! Getty Images

While these fun and games are important, it’s vital to remember that inflation is a serious thing. When the moment feels right, transition the party to an “in memoriam” section. Everyone can share their favourite memories of high inflation, or reflect on things they’d like to have bought but didn’t. While some might remember these years only for the high prices, there were some high points. The National Party inspired us all to get a side hustle. Succession finally finished, which was a huge relief to those of us who had been feeling left out because our colleagues talked about it all the time. Maybe there are a few other things which I’m not thinking of right now. Anyway, a good party has tears as well as laughter, so make sure there’s some room for mourning at your end-of-inflation gathering. 

Decor 

It wouldn’t be an inflation-related gathering if you didn’t have to inflate things! Blow up as many balloons as you can find, and feel grateful that the value of the dollar isn’t “blowing up” as well. If you’re thrifty, the decor can double as entertainment: reuse the inflation pins, and give each guest a bag of breath to ceremoniously pop before they leave.

A trip to Look Sharp should see you right – why not purchase the letters for C O S T O F L I V N G C R I S I S ($5 each, for a total of $85), some confetti balloons to add to the atmosphere ($3 for 12) and a variety of plain colours? 

Snacks 

We’ve been trying not to spend for years, and too many parties have been fed with $5 Domino specials. No more! It’s time to spend as much money as possible without fear of repercussions: inflation is over, baby! You should at least spring for Hell’s Pizza, but if you really want to demonstrate a devil-may-care attitude to the now-flourishing economy, why not buy one of those very long and expensive big bougie pizzas for everyone to pick at? 

A green salad: health is very important – make sure your guests are getting their dose of five-a-day. Keep the salad in the fridge until it’s ready to serve, and make sure it contains rocket, so you can point out how you’ve been “cooling your jets”. 

Shrinkflation snacks: Anything you can find that has gotten smaller as the price has stayed the same. A packet of Tim Tams with only nine biscuits inside would be perfect. Slimmed-down chocolate bars, whether Cadbury’s finest (now made overseas) or Snickers bars. Miniature tubes of surprisingly expensive Pringles. Boiled eggs (from a carton of 10, not 12). And let’s not forget the non-human guests: raw dog food has also been a victim of shrinkflation

Drinks: Wakachangi, which miraculously has not changed in price at all throughout this entire experience.

Keep going!
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PoliticsJuly 3, 2024

‘Horrible’: Nurses describe work conditions amid staffing debate

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Last July it was determined the country’s public health service was in need of 4,800 more nurses. In June, Te Whatu Ora gave an update, saying the hospitals were 2,000 nurses ‘ahead’. Nurses and their union disagree.

“I used to leave work and sit in my car and just sob every day – every day. It’s not that I couldn’t do the job – I could – but it was so soul destroying.” Charlotte* has been a nurse for about 35 years. Until recently, she was a duty nurse in charge of allocating staff to different departments of the hospital. She says there were never enough nurses, so she’d have to roster them according to the risk of death in each area. “That just about broke me.” Now, she’s back to being a regular nurse on a ward. She, and four other nurses spoken to by The Spinoff, described “broken” hospitals in which senior staff don’t have time to eat or go to the toilet. She’s moved on from crying – now she’s angry.

Nurses are New Zealand’s largest health workforce, and it’s widely understood there’s not enough of them – data from July 2023 showed there was a shortage of about 4,800. National campaigned on delivering more nurses in response to a “system in crisis” and a “severe shortage”. In February, health minister Shane Reti said addressing health workforce shortages was his number one priority, and that “my end goal is to have New Zealand, homegrown, domestically culturally competent nurses”.

And yet in April, hospitals were asked to save $105 million by July. Staff were encouraged to take leave and working overtime was clamped down on. If “non-frontline” staff left, they were not replaced and existing vacancies were wiped. Reti said that reducing day-to-day operational spending would mean “they can re-invest in the frontline”. Then, in June, Te Whatu Ora chief executive Margie Apa told RNZ “we are about 2,000 nursing FTEs [full time equivalent] ahead of where we planned to be [in hospitals]”. She was speaking about the recent decision to limit the number of graduate nurses placed in hospitals. Instead, many of the 535 graduates will be placed in primary care, private sector aged residential care, child health services or public health.

Nurse on the phone and tacking notes
If admin staff are cut, nurses pick up the slack, says Olivia. Photo: Getty

“Suddenly, we’ve gone from Te Whatu Ora acknowledging that we’ve got 4,800 nurse vacancies across the country that haven’t been filled, to all of a sudden we’ve got a surplus of full time equivalent nurses, and in fact – 2,000 nurses over,” says Kerri Nuku, kaiwhakahaere of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO), which represents about 62,000 nurses around the country. She says the call was made without consulting unions. NZNO says that the government is trying to save money on their staffing by restricting the employment of graduate nurses and cutting back on existing staff, and that we are still in a nursing crisis.

When asked for clarification on these 2,000 nurses and what they were ahead on as well as nursing numbers on the whole, Te Whatu Ora provided comment from chief people officer Andrew Slater. “We have increased our nursing numbers significantly with an extra 2,899 in the last year,” he said, but added that it was “not a surplus”. If they’re “ahead” by 2,000, this suggests they were only expecting to increase numbers by 900 last year. “We continue to recruit to our nursing workforce – particularly in specialist areas such as mental health and addictions, and critical care.” 

Graduate nurses are placed by Te Whatu Ora into the Nursing Entry to Practice Programme (NETP). The programme provides a paid one-year placement where they’re well-supported in the transition to work. Apa’s suggestion that there aren’t vacancies in hospitals was “a really bizarre call”, says Nuku. Just two months ago NZNO set out to find out just how thin nurses are on the ground, requesting official information from Te Whatu Ora. The data they got back showed that on average over a quarter of Te Whatu Ora hospital shifts were understaffed in 2023. Twenty hospital wards reported shifts below target more than two thirds of the time. Staffing was the worst in mental health wards. “The reality is that they [nurses] go to work every day not knowing if they’ve got a full complement of staff that are going to be able to deliver the quality of care,” says Nuku. 

Alice*, a nursing student, wants a NETP placement at a hospital next year. She is currently in her final year of a nursing degree on placement at a hospital. She is rostered on full time shifts like any other nurse. While she’s there for training, senior nurses are often too busy as wards are “obviously understaffed”, she says. “A lot of times we’re just following around our preceptors [experienced supervisor] and trying to help out where we can.”

She went into nursing to care for patients in hospitals, like many of her peers. “That’s where we’ve been doing our placements, and that’s what we’ve been preparing for.” Being placed elsewhere for the NETP year means they could miss out on hospital-specific skills and knowledge, and it’s frustrating, she says, when she can see the hospital needs more nurses. Recent news has made Alice and her cohort uncertain about this future. “It’s really stressful because obviously, we’ve studied for the three years to get into this job, and now we’re not really guaranteed to actually get a job, and it’s hard to know what’s factual and what’s not, because there’s so much talk. Obviously that talk is coming from somewhere, but then other places are denying it, so we’re kind of up in the air.”

Olivia*, who has been nursing for about eight years, says not giving graduate nurses jobs in hospitals is “hideously short-sighted”. She says it’s part of a cycle she has seen before – without jobs, new graduates leave, then there are not enough nurses so the government pushes for people to study nursing, only to then not offer them places – “it’s just baffling”. She says that when she graduated, about half of her cohort weren’t given jobs in hospitals. “It’s so demoralising,” she says. “You’ve done all this study, taken on all this loan – it’s a really challenging degree in terms of the time you spend doing placements and stuff – and then to not be able to get a job was really awful for people.” Worse is that many have moved away from nursing, she says. 

Taking on graduate nurses should be viewed as an investment into our healthcare system, she says, even if at the moment the shortage isn’t as great as it once was. “Even if for a year or so we’re actually borderline well-staffed, would that really be such a bad thing?” Instead she’s noticed “people are leaving and they’re not being replaced. If two nurses leave, and then you don’t hire somebody to take over, to fill that role, that is essentially cutting frontline staff.” And nurses don’t work independently of other staff – “if you’re cutting admin staff or reception staff, nurses just have to pick up that slack as well.”

Despite the conditions, all four nurses said they love nursing (Photo: Getty Images)

Claire*, a “homegrown” nurse, has been working for about four decades. She says when she started on a surgical ward one nurse might have had six patients to look after. That was fine then, but things are different now – “the patients are older and sicker. You can’t do it. You almost need to have one nurse to three patients, but that ratio just isn’t possible.” She gets angry when she hears someone say the population is ageing. When four of her patients in one morning are over 100 years old, it’s clear it’s already aged. “Shane Reti, he said that the other day, and I nearly jumped through the TV to punch him. It’s not ageing – it’s aged.”

Older people have more comorbidities (the simultaneous presence of two or more health conditions) and need more support and care. Claire is angry because “we knew this was going to happen. Medical science is improving all the time. People are going to live longer. People are going to come into hospital with a list of comorbidities and on all sorts of drugs, and that means they’re going to stay in hospital longer.” That, paired with population growth, has rendered our hospitals “fundamentally not fit for purpose”, she says. “We spend our entire life trying to push patients into places which aren’t the right places for them to be.” Sometimes that push is out the door – “everyone’s under pressure to kick someone out, and it’s horrible. That’s not what we went into medicine for.” Claire says these conditions are demoralising. “You work your arse off, and when you go home, you feel like you haven’t been able to give good care. That’s horrible. That’s an awful feeling.”

*All nurses’ names have been changed to protect their anonymity and employment.

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