Roads: potholes and gridlock. Schools: a decade of the kids’ lives and too many still can’t read or write. Hospitals: you wait, and sometimes you die waiting. Welfare: we pay people — crooks included — not to work. The state’s core jobs are a mess. Always another review. Always another failure.
Now walk into a supermarket.
Clean. Stocked. Thousands of lines. Fresh fruit, veg, meat, milk — today, not next financial year. No ballot for bananas. No waiting list for bread. If the price is wrong or the service is rude, you leave. That’s why the shelves are full. Failure costs money.
So what does this election offer?
Politicians who can’t fix a pothole want to run the greengrocery.
National will “pursue” carving up Foodstuffs — Pak’nSave versus New World — after a Commerce Commission think-piece. Labour will police wholesale, ban “gouging,” and rewrite how shops buy stock. The Greens want KiwiMart: a state supermarket, because nothing says ripe avocados like the people who run the DHBs. NZ First wants a break-up too. Only ACT mostly says: stop strangling entry and let someone else try.
Mad. Chaotic. And revealing.
They aren’t promising better reading. Or shorter waits. Or roads that work. They’re promising to become greengrocer czars — commissioners, firewalls, forced separations, public competitors — aimed at the one place Kiwis can still buy what they need without a ticket.
Why? Because bullying a supermarket is easier than teaching a child. Easier than clearing a hospital waiting list. Easier than admitting the state’s failure is not a PR problem.
Yes, groceries can be dear. Yes, two big players deserve hard eyes on land covenants and supplier squeeze. The answer is more rivals and fewer barriers — not putting the Ministry of Everything in charge of the lettuce.
Next time you’re in the aisle, look around. The private shop works. The public monopoly still doesn’t. And the politicians who own the failure want a new job: telling you what a tomato should cost.
They should stick to the potholes. They’re not finished with those yet.
So what does this election offer?
Politicians who can’t fix a pothole want to run the greengrocery.
National will “pursue” carving up Foodstuffs — Pak’nSave versus New World — after a Commerce Commission think-piece. Labour will police wholesale, ban “gouging,” and rewrite how shops buy stock. The Greens want KiwiMart: a state supermarket, because nothing says ripe avocados like the people who run the DHBs. NZ First wants a break-up too. Only ACT mostly says: stop strangling entry and let someone else try.
Mad. Chaotic. And revealing.
They aren’t promising better reading. Or shorter waits. Or roads that work. They’re promising to become greengrocer czars — commissioners, firewalls, forced separations, public competitors — aimed at the one place Kiwis can still buy what they need without a ticket.
Why? Because bullying a supermarket is easier than teaching a child. Easier than clearing a hospital waiting list. Easier than admitting the state’s failure is not a PR problem.
Yes, groceries can be dear. Yes, two big players deserve hard eyes on land covenants and supplier squeeze. The answer is more rivals and fewer barriers — not putting the Ministry of Everything in charge of the lettuce.
Next time you’re in the aisle, look around. The private shop works. The public monopoly still doesn’t. And the politicians who own the failure want a new job: telling you what a tomato should cost.
They should stick to the potholes. They’re not finished with those yet.
Rodney Hide is former ACT Party leader, and Minister in the National-ACT Government from 2008 to 2011. This article was first published HERE
6 comments:
Spot on Rodney Hide. This is nothing more than a Luxon Willis brain explosion in a desperate attempt to seek relevancy.
Is this the same Rodney Hide who shut down competing councils in Auckland in favour of one centralized monopoly city council? Does this Rodney Hide actually know what a single supermarket owner makes in NZ? There's a whole bunch of five million dollar boats in Westhaven Marina owned by a group of them. Has this Rodney Hide ever heard of anti trust law even in the pro capitalist United States which protects the intregrity of the market system?
Rodney, your claim that "Everything government monopolises, it botches" is wrong.
There is a book: 'By Design: A brief history of the Public Works Department Ministry of Works 1870-1970' by Rosslyn J. Noonan (1975) which boasts of how the government built New Zealand's entire infrastructure from scratch in the space of a century.
It may well be that everything YOUR government monopolises, it botches, but it has been demonstrated that need not be the case.
The problem is YOUR ideology and YOUR implementation; our present Parliament is not fit for purpose.
It is high time that we all admitted that whatever it is we have go going now is not working and needs to be radically revised.
Robert Mac , you are conflating two parts of a business into one soundbite "supermarket owner in NZ ".
Of course a supermarket expect to make a profit , however the silent profit maker is the Foodstuffs shareholder operation , the conglomerate that organise efficiently, quality food for NZ.
Foodstuffs North Island made net 3.8% last year, Foodstuffs SI made 2.9%. Woolworths made a loss.
You’d need to sell a hell of a lot of carrots at those margins to buy a 5 $Million boat.
Anon at 2.37, you keep publishing these 'corporate' figures, as if we're supposed to believe there's minimal profit in supermarkets? How much do individual owners take out before the corporate results are declared? I don't know who owns those boats, but there is money in supermarkets. And I don't think governments should get involved in breaking up or running them. The answer is to make it easy for competition, get rid of the stupid and expensive rules and regulations that prevent investors coming into NZ.
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