Will’s Word: Why is NZ paying gold for its own dairy?

Kiwis are getting creamed! Let me explain that further.

New Zealand is a land of rolling green hills, millions of cows, and somehow extremely expensive butter. Statistics NZ just dropped the latest food price figures and it's honestly pretty damn offensive

Butter is up 64 per cent in the last year. Milk? You'd be like, ‘surely not’ - that's up 16 per cent, buddy. Chocolate? Almost $6 and mince, which is supposed to be the cheapest cut of meat, apparently, is nearly $20 a kilo.

What on earth? This is the part that really gets me, we're not importing this stuff, we make it. We farm the cows, milk them, process the butter, and pack the milk. We're drowning in dairy, yet somehow we're paying gold bar prices.

Why? Some would argue that because exporters are getting top dollar overseas, our prices get dragged along for the ride. We're being charged international rates for products made in our own damn backyard.

The logic? There is none. It's a cash grab. Spray the cash. The cash that we frankly don't have. Supermarkets, dairy giants, exporters, they're all creaming it while we're stuck deciding whether to buy milk or not.

The only redeeming factor I saw out of the figures yesterday: fruit and vegetables down two per cent. Beautiful, wunderbar (wonderful).

This is not a cost of living crisis, this is a straight-up scam, a national embarrassment. We shouldn't be paying more for butter than, say, a cheap bottle of wine.

We shouldn't be paying anything close to this for milk when we export billions in dairy every year. Where are we going wrong? Is this a consequence of free trade? Or is this a consequence of inflation? It's extraordinary, isn't it?

Listen to Will’s Word on Facebook below.

I was dumbfounded by Stats NZ's figures yesterday. We are a dairy nation, yet we continue to pay outrageous prices.

Luckily, I'm on a diet and I don't purchase milk or butter.

That's Will's Word.