@ FC_Shaza #6, not very PC but very true.

Ian #5 "its so simple". I can see you have never run a business and have no idea how complicated it would be to have some foods exempt from GST. Australia's system sounds good but is a nightmare to administer.

@ Andy, a lot of people are living in rental accommodation because saving up for a deposit is often near impossible. The problem with rental accommodation is that you often are not granted permission to change things like the garden to start things like veggie gardens. At our rental we do have permission to put raised beds on one of the grassy bits, but with the condition that we restore it to look exactly as it looks now when we move out. Not only is raised gardens start up cost quite expensive, but having to replant grass and so on to restore the grassy area when we move out will be too expensive for us too. Of course I can do raised gardens on concrete but in order to do this at a scale where I could effectively grow all our own veggies and feed my family without having to buy veggies I would need to fork out hundreds of dollars just to get started (and that is just making our own raised beds and organising some sort of soil and planting from seed).

I was absolutely geared up to go ahead with this after watching Get Growing, but after investigating the cost of soil that would be needed to fit into the required space, I simply cannot afford to do this.

If more landlords were happy for ppl to actually start something like this then yes I can well imagine many more ppl would actually get into this.

What a load of bollocks, it is way cheaper to eat healthily. Low income earners tend to be lazy, hence why they haven't up skilled into higher paying jobs, so would rather eat pre prepared rubbish than spend an extra 10 minutes cooking a healthy meal. When I think healthy i think vege, carb and meat (Vege & rice are pretty cheap) as long as you don't buy the finest cuts of meat, not the healthy choices at macas

It so simple, all they have to do is to make your staple diet GST free.eg. fruit,vegetables etc. I can already hear the excuses, but if a 3rd World country like South Africa can do it I would have though we could. Oh well we do have to pay these politicians gross salaries somehow.

Some landlords will not let people put in vege gardens. My own home has a pretty small section, that allows me to grow a couple of lettuces and things like that, but nothing great. How sad that in NZ we can't even afford to eat our own produce. I wonder how many generations before we really are third world.

And the current government clearly don't care about this situation. Affordable healthy food should be a guaranteed basic right for all New Zealanders. It is very sad that so many people voted for this pathetic government out of pure greed and stupidity!

Yes people have forgotten how to grow their own food. That's what the supermarkets want. To keep us coming back they have to teach us how to be good economic citizens and spend our days working in meaningless jobs so that the ones at the top can buy a boat, or a bach, or go on holiday. Not to teach us how we can go about feeding ourselves. Why the hell should we worry about sending all of our prime FOOD overseas? lets start by feeding ourselves at home. I'm sick of the second hand crap we get delivered from down the road because china and whoever else gets first choice.

Most houses have decent gardens, have people lost the knowledge on how to grow their own veggies? A pack of seeds cost a couple of dollars. You can grow greens all year round and summmer can be a boom time with veg left for winter if frozen, perhaps it would be worth while govt spending time re educating how to cheaply grow your own food? Own grown saves us $$$ each year.