I know! Let's take a big pet project of the last Labour Government and interfere with private property and manipulate the market and sell off supermarkets. And let's not sell off all supermarkets, not the Australian ones. Let's take the supermarkets owned by New Zealanders, good hard working young couples who go and live in small communities that Woolworths won't touch, and make them less profitable and make them charge less for the goods that they sell. How about that?"
I am stumped that they thought this was a good idea and then even more stumped that whoever came up with the idea managed to sell it to the rest of them. Because I assume it's not a brain fart of Nicola Willis'. She's been on one ever since she came into government. She's been on the backs of the supermarkets. But for the love of all that's holy, this is an idea that goes against National's entire DNA. They're having the biggest identity crisis since Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn Jenner. It's an absolute head scratcher. However, Nicola Willis is adamant. This is what she told Mike Hosking this morning:
I am stumped that they thought this was a good idea and then even more stumped that whoever came up with the idea managed to sell it to the rest of them. Because I assume it's not a brain fart of Nicola Willis'. She's been on one ever since she came into government. She's been on the backs of the supermarkets. But for the love of all that's holy, this is an idea that goes against National's entire DNA. They're having the biggest identity crisis since Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn Jenner. It's an absolute head scratcher. However, Nicola Willis is adamant. This is what she told Mike Hosking this morning:
"We believe in competitive enterprise and what the study after study has said about our supermarket sector is that it is a complete outlier internationally and that it is so consolidated it isn't operating like a normally competitive market. I want competitive, strong businesses innovating, offering variety, competing on price and the evidence I have received says that's not going to happen for so long as you have an effective duopoly. So this is not a normal market, there is evidence of market failure. Yes, this is an unusual step, but man oh man, we've got a problem here."
Really? You know, it's a mixed up, jumbled up, shook up world in which we live. There are few things upon which you can rely. One of them is that National is the party of small government, minimal interference, a champion of small business owners. Now they're not. And the thing is it might all be for naught. They might be confusing and infuriating what voter base they have left for nothing. Dependent on the Commerce Commission, dependent on coalition partners, might be a Trojan horse. Okay, we'll leave the supermarkets, but we'll raise the age of Super to 68 – I don't know. As I say, I'm absolutely perplexed.
We might be a percentage point higher in terms of grocery prices than other countries —to be fair, we have been a lot higher in recent times— but ask anyone in London or Sydney or Stockholm if they're paying too much for their groceries and they'll say, by crikey, yes we are. And although Australia and Canada and the UK among other countries have looked long and hard at their supermarket chains, none of them has taken the highly unusual step of breaking up privately owned supermarkets. It used to be that if you wanted the government to step in and try and fix things to make things a bit fairer, to protect and insulate you from the cruel vagaries of day to day life, you'd vote Labour or the Greens, you had a choice. If you wanted supermarkets broken up to create an artificial competition in the marketplace, you'd vote Labour or the Greens. And now look, you lucky, lucky things. What a choice. Labour, Greens or National. Who'd have thought.
Kerre McIvor, is a journalist, radio presenter, author and columnist. Currently hosts the Kerre Woodham mornings show on Newstalk ZB - where this article was sourced.
9 comments:
It is pure distraction. Look at the bad supermarkets. They are ripping you off. Meanwhile we haven’t sorted out the civil service, local government, water, and race relations in this country. All because they want to re-elected. They have no leadership.
If only this or any government demanded the same of the beuracrats , maybe start with the ability and will , to fire those at the top.
, the private sector has to own its mistakes , the government and councils bury theirs and are becoming less and less efficient , just bigger in numbers . And yes what are they thinking .
I lived in the UK for almost 17 years. They had 4 big supermarket groups, plus Aldi and Lidl and other smaller groups. When Asda and Sainsburys tried to merge, they stopped it, because it would reduce competition. NZ used to have competition, Supervalue, Foodtown etc. Who let them get bought? The government(s) created this situation, maybe they should fix it!
Simply a diversion from what is really going on - increased subservience to Maori demands that Luxon will not address.
I have recently relocated to Brisbane and I can assure you that groceries are no cheaper over here. $8 (NZ$10) for 500g of butter. What would that be back home?
On a ‘Net profit after tax’ comparison, Foodstuffs North Island makes 3.8%., Foodstuffs SI makes 2.9% and Woolworths makes a loss, so it’s easy to see why Foodstuffs is the obvious target.
Hard to see however how splitting Foodstuffs up will make any difference other than reducing economies of scale and thus increasing costs.
However, we all know that ‘Something must be done’ about grocery prices so all the politicians are casting around for what that ‘something’ is.
Doesn’t matter that it will all come to naught after the election as long as you have ‘something’ you can point to as your party policy before November, and, given National’s late entry to this bunfight this Split ‘em up’ policy was about the only one left.
What would really fix grocery price is to curtail inflation (up by 29% since Covid era profligacy) but that’s too hard, so let’s blame it all on the supermarkets (including Woolworths with it’s negative profit margins) instead.
As a final note, if an Australasian giant like Woolworths, with 100 years of experience behind them can’t turn a profit in the NZ market, how successful could the Green Parties nationwide chain of ‘Mamdani Marts’ be? I suspect the answer is, not very
Anon 7:36 Just maybe some supermarkets are offering product at a higher cost , for a multitude of reasons ie theft , damage , going rotten , wrong product .
Just maybe if you purchase that same product you are complicit in ripping yourself off. ???
Re Anon at 9.39 am. If the reported profit levels are as low as you claim, I'd like to see the accounting systems used. Apparently most Foodstuffs supermarkets are "locally owned" How much do these owners pay themselves before the group profit is reported? How many on the NZ rich list are supermarket owners?
Anon 10.47
Why shouldn't the supermarket owners be on the "rich" list ?
No risk, no reward.
Their latest risk is having their businesses " nationalized" by any of the parties - with the buyer setting the price .
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