This time, deflation is caused by New Zealand's ability to import the impact of excess capacity from elsewhere.
In economics, deflation is a decrease in the general price level of goods and services.
As local activity remains robust and house prices push ever higher, there is no room for the Reserve Bank to lower its official cash rate.
BNZ markets economist Stephen Toplis says that, given inflation will stay well below the Reserve Bank's target for some time, the BNZ economists have decided to postpone their expected rate hike resumption to March 2016.
''We also concede that we have little conviction at this stage as to the exact starting time or extent of future rate hikes. Indeed, there may yet be none.''
Traditionally, deflation was seen as a bad thing. If prices were dropping, consumers delayed buying things in order to capture lower future prices.
As a consequence, economic activity slowed - retailers reduced sales, manufacturers supplying those retailers reduced production and transport requirements diminished.
Lower activity meant lower employment, which often led to reduced demand and more downward pressure on prices.
Mr Toplis said that was nice in theory but could not be further from the truth in New Zealand right now.
''There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of a retrenchment in activity due to the pressure on the general consumer price level. Indicative of the contrary, real retail sales in the September quarter 2014 were 4.9% higher than year-earlier levels.''
How deflation was thought of needed to change - for the current cycle in particular, he said.
If domestic prices were falling because there was insufficient demand, the normal deflationary spiral might still hold.
If they were falling because of a ''perfect storm'' of external shocks - some cyclical, some structural - the conclusions reached were quite different.
There were some relative price shifts at play and the drop in oil prices was at the forefront, Mr Toplis said.
But it would be wrong to conclude it was relative price shifts alone creating the current environment.
A glance across the sub-groups of the Consumers Price Index (the official measure of inflation) showed there were numerous categories where prices were falling.
For example: food prices fell 0.6% in the year to September; the alcohol and tobacco sub-group rose 2.7% but if the 10% increase in tobacco prices attributable to tax increases was taken out, there was deflation; clothing and footwear prices rose just 0.4% over the period but were still 4.2% below their December 2009 level; household contents and services prices dropped 0.4%; the communication group deflated by 3.8% over the year.
The only real areas of inflationary pressures were in housing and household utilities, up 2.5%, and education, also up 3.5%.
Rather than focus on why relative price shifts were causing inflation to be so low, the focus should be on why a small number of relative price increases were artificially inflating the headline CPI, he said.
''That said, it is most definitely plummeting oil prices that are causing us to revise downward our short-term CPI forecasts by the day. It helps the direct effect of these price movements is observable, but it is clear there will also be downstream impacts we are probably underestimating.''
The drop in oil prices was turning out to be a windfall gain for consumers. Consumers were not delaying fuel consumption in expectation of future falls in prices, Mr Toplis said.
Instead, as fuel consumption was ''fairly inelastic'' to prices, households had ended up with extra money in their pockets to spend on other goods and services, boosting, rather than contracting, future activity.
There would be casualties of deflation, he said.
A manufacturer, distributor or retailer unable to access falling prices, or someone unable to differentiate their offering so significantly the latest developments did not matter, would have problems.
Tradeable goods inflation was becoming less influenced by domestic demand conditions and more influenced by spare capacity in global markets than had ever been the case.
''With bucketloads of spare capacity globally, there is simply no room for domestic sellers to push their prices higher, especially with the New Zealand dollar remaining as lofty as it is.''
Not everything was bought across the internet and being imported from offshore, Mr Toplis said.
However, local sellers could not afford to price their goods excessively when they knew prospective buyers could easily access prices elsewhere.
