Hipkins has enjoyed a bounce in the polls, but now economic conditions are biting into living standards of the average Kiwi

Just as economic conditions  are biting into the living standards of the  average New Zealander, so are they darkening for the Labour government.

For Chris Hipkins, who has  given Labour  a  bounce in the polls, the  charmed  run he has enjoyed could be coming to a  brutal end.

He may  be pinning  his  hopes on  his Finance  Minister, Grant Robertson, working a miracle in  a  budget  that  will produce a glow to  warm the  average taxpayer. The problem  for Robertson, though,  is that if  he spends up large, as he did through the Covid pandemic, he  may  just prolong the agony inflicted by high prices, because  the Reserve Bank  will have to sustain interest  rates at a peak as it tries,  in Governor Adrian Orr’s phrase, to “cool the jets”.

In  any  case, the Prime Minister  contends prices are  beginning to stabilise.

That doesn’t wash  with the  average householder who has just seen — and felt — the impact of food prices rising by 12.1%.

The April 1 boost to  benefits, large as it was, was supposed to  offset rising costs but failed to  do so.