As KiwiSaver managers report a surge in hardship applications (as reported by RNZ, February 2026), largely driven by rising living costs, a curious pattern emerges when you look back at regional food price data: what happened in Timaru in 2014?

For four consecutive years, Timaru's food price index readings held steady around 15,000. Then, in 2014, the number dropped to 7,836 — almost exactly half (Source: Stats NZ, food-price-index-detailed). Not a gradual decline. Not a gentle easing. An overnight halving.

This wasn't food suddenly becoming affordable. This was a methodology change, a reclassification, or a shift in how Stats NZ measured regional food prices. It's the kind of discontinuity that makes historical comparisons nearly impossible — and it matters, because when we talk about today's cost-of-living crisis, we're constantly looking backward for context.

The timing is particularly striking. By 2014, New Zealand was emerging from the Global Financial Crisis. The pressure on household budgets was real. But if you tried to track Timaru's food prices from 2010 to 2020 using this dataset, you'd see an apparent 50% drop that never actually happened in anyone's shopping trolley.

These figures are also in nominal terms — not adjusted for inflation (Source: Stats NZ, food-price-index-detailed). With New Zealand experiencing approximately 20-25% inflation since 2019 alone, comparing dollar values across years without that context is like comparing apples to... well, much more expensive apples.

This matters now because the conversation around KiwiSaver hardship withdrawals hinges on understanding cost pressures over time. When people raid their retirement savings to cover grocery bills, we need to know: are things genuinely worse than a decade ago, or are we just measuring differently?

The honest answer is both. Food prices have risen sharply in real terms since 2020. But datasets with discontinuities like Timaru's 2014 drop make it harder to build the historical baseline we need. You can't measure how far you've fallen if you don't know where you started.

For families deciding whether to tap their KiwiSaver because the weekly shop has become unmanageable, these methodological quirks are invisible. They just know they're spending more. But for policymakers, economists, and anyone trying to understand the true scale of New Zealand's cost-of-living crisis, data breaks like this one are a problem.

The food price pain is real. The KiwiSaver withdrawals are real. But the numbers we use to measure them? Sometimes they tell a story with a missing chapter.