A Rotorua household, according to Stats NZ's food price index, spent $7,683 on groceries in 2014. The year before, that same household spent $15,317. (Source: Stats NZ, food-price-index-detailed)

That's not a cost-of-living crisis. That's half a city's food spending evaporating in twelve months.

While RNZ reports households across New Zealand are freezing their spending as bills soar, Rotorua's 2014 data presents the opposite problem: numbers so dramatically lower they suggest something broke in how the city's grocery spending was measured, not in how people shopped.

For context, every other region in New Zealand saw grocery costs climb steadily through this period. Auckland households went from spending around $14,000 annually on food in 2013 to over $15,500 by 2024. Wellington followed the same trajectory. Even the rest of the North Island, where costs are typically lower, saw year-on-year increases.

Rotorua? The data shows $15,309 in 2011, holding steady at $15,295 in 2012 and $15,317 in 2013. Then it drops to $7,683 in 2014 and the record stops.

This isn't about Rotorua families suddenly eating half as much. This is about a statistical series that appears to have fundamentally changed what it was measuring, or how it sampled the region, between 2013 and 2014.

The timing matters because 2014 was when New Zealand's food prices began their long climb toward today's crisis levels. Every policy conversation about grocery affordability, every comparison showing how much harder it is to feed a family now than a decade ago, relies on having accurate baseline data from that period.

If Rotorua's numbers shifted because of a methodology change, sampling adjustment, or data collection issue, that's fine. But it needs to be flagged. Because right now, the official record suggests one city somehow halved its grocery spending in the year before food inflation began its decade-long surge.

The broader point: when we talk about soaring bills putting household spending on ice, we're relying on data that tells us where we started. If that baseline is wrong, or inconsistent, or changed without explanation, then every comparison to 'ten years ago' becomes unreliable.

Rotorua's missing $7,634 isn't just a statistical curiosity. It's a reminder that the numbers we use to understand the cost-of-living crisis need to be as solid as the crisis itself is real.