When it comes to helping people cope, the Government had already shovelled in its best efforts - the fuel tax reprieves and half-price public transport, and the gift that came with a backfire: the cost-of-living payment.
The fuel tax cuts will be around until January but the third and final cost-of-living payment hit low earners' bank accounts a fortnight ago.
That was intended to help tide over those on low incomes – or at least buy them some time to adjust their spending habits. That initial response to sky-rocketing inflation was geared around forecasts that inflation would start to ease back from the middle of this year. Alas, inflation did not play ball.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson appears to have little appetite for either repeating the expensive payment, or coming up with a new version.
That is not only because of the political backlash it got from revelations it was going to those overseas. It is also because one of the things the Government can do to help ease inflation is nothing – or at least less: Robertson has now pledged to tighten his own belt, and peg back spending by targeting it where most needed. That means "tough choices" and consequences – and resistance to political temptation.
That might indeed help inflation, but it also makes it hard to help people battling with inflation – and those people are voters. No decision comes without tricky consequences.
Nor is it clear whether the end is in sight – and the longer it goes, the more those on middle incomes are stretched too - and the more mortgage rates ratchet up. It's a grim time ahead for Robertson.
While National leader Christopher Luxon claimed the Government was to blame and spoke of inflation "crushing" Kiwis, Robertson was blaming the bad weather and events far away - the broken record of the Ukraine war, and ongoing pressure on supply lines. He noted some other countries had it even worse - although he acknowledged that was cold comfort.
While Robertson has said any spending will be very targeted at those on low incomes, the tricky pickle the Government faces is the increasing pain for those on middle incomes: the majority of New Zealanders.
The easiest way to target that group is through tax cuts but that is another question Robertson does not want to answer – at least not until closer to the election.
Instead he has been busy lambasting National for promising tax cuts – and claiming tax cuts would only fuel inflation more.
The key question that leaves Labour with is whether, just as Covid-19 won them the 2020 election, will inflation lose them the 2023 election?
