Average family ‘worse off’

Press, 27 November 1982, Page 2

Average family ‘worse off’

Parliamentary reporter The average New Zealand family could be up to $33 a week worse off by the end of the wage freeze next July, said the Opposition spokesman on consumer affairs, Mrs Ann Hercus, yesterday. She was commenting on the latest effective weekly wage rates index released at noon, for the September quarter.

It showed a drop in living standards of about 7 per cent in the last six months, she said. If this continued to the end of the freeze, the average family could be more than 16 per cent worse off. This would be equivalent to being unable to buy six bottles of milk, two loaves of bread, a kilogram each of sausages, mince, chuck steak, and tangelo'es, one dozen

eggs, skg of flour, a packet of washing powder, a packet of nappy cleaner, a jar of marmite, and $6 worth ■of fruit and vegetables. The freeze was hitting hardest families on lowest incomes, she said. The Statistics Department said that the data shown in the index were collected in August, about two months after the freeze was imposed.