She's playing a very risky political game and she knows it.
Cost of living is the only game in town this election – win on the cost-of-living battle and you win the war.
Nicola thinks by looking tough on supermarkets she'll earn the respect of the 'squeezed middle'.
But, as I've said many times before, even if you wipe out all the so-called 'super profits' the supermarkets are making, you benefit by a few extra dollars per week.
But there's a big "if" here.
Our supermarkets are run very efficiently. Yes, they are dominant, too dominant, but that allows economies of scale in a long, thin country of five million people.
Mess with that for political gain and you risk prices actually going up, not down.
That is not my view. That is the view of the very report which Nicola relied on to make her grand pronouncement yesterday.
In other words, this whole thing could end up costing us more than it saves us.
Nobody knows for sure. No governments in the world have gone in with an axe and split up a live supermarket chain in real time.
The very threat of it will put the willies up investors. Who's going to be investing in New Zealand's supermarket industry before the second half of 2027?
That's how long a second report will take to answer those questions.
And guess what, those risks, those 'scenarios', those best guesses on calculators by modellers will still be there in 12 months' time.
At which point, National will shelve this idea. It won't happen.
This isn't happening. It's not serious. It's politics. It's election year.
Some are saying this is Nicola's Jacinda nuclear-free, oil and gas moment.
But it's not. Jacinda actually did the ban. Nicola's not.
Jacinda fired the gun, Nicola's just waving it around the supermarket for a photo-op.
Ryan Bridge is a New Zealand broadcaster who has worked on many current affairs television and radio shows. He currently hosts Newstalk ZB's Early Edition - where this article was sourced.
13 comments:
The Coalition could bring down the price of groceries, by allowing licensed security guards to arrest the thieves who currently walk out of supermarkets with trolleys full of expensive goods with impunity.
Who pays for those ?
Every last one of us !
A factor added to the cost of running the business.
And don't give me any BS that they are poor and just trying to feed their families.
To quote Sir Humphrey from Yes Minister, the press tell us “Something must be done, and this is something, so it must be done”
Add in the words ‘grocery prices are too high’ and you see why every political party is thrashing around searching for that ‘something’ that must be done.
None of these ‘fixes’ will come to anything, but for the next few weeks, up to the election, they will all be able to claim that they feel the shoppers pain and they have a plan to do ‘something’ about it.
What that ‘something’ is is largely irrelevant so long as each party can give the impression of having a plan of some kind, no matter how implausible.
Despicable National Party aping the Greens/Labour strategy (attack) on private businesses. Just when we thought they could go no lower, they have bumbled their way into yet another trap of their own making. If I were privileged enough to own a PaknSave, I'd put all prices up by 5% today and treble my profit margin. One may as well make hay for as long as the sun shines, and of course even better if the yellow-belly politicians of whatever stripe do not follow through on such election 'promises'..
".....allowing licensed security guards to arrest the thieves who currently walk out of supermarkets with trolleys full of expensive goods with impunity."
I agree. And I also agree with your last sentence. In any event, lots of NZers are hard-up, but we don't pinch stuff from the supermarkets.
The notion of splitting up the supermarket duopoly is just bonkers. Who'd have thought it: the Natz proposing to mess with private property. Who's next? Inoffensive homeowners?
NZ is too small and too far away from anywhere, for the supermarket landscape to be radically different from what it is currently.
It's possible that foreign investors will come here, but not if the government does this sort of thing. Why would they come?
Ryan tells us that the "cost of living is the only game in town this election"? It's not. There's another game, far more serious to this country's future, being played out by a rabidly vocal minority intent on destabilizing our country, aided and promoted by a left wing element in our state-owned organisations and in our media - which chooses to showcase radical political aspirants of less than no worth and who have turned our Parliament into a disgraceful circus, all of this fed from the complacent silence from the majority of us in our fear that we might be labelled as - racist. So we sit still, and dream on that the words of some temporary politicians will quietly fix all this for us. They won't. We will get what we deserve, and currently we are sleepwalking into a societal hell. Time to wake up, New Zealand.
Nicola Willis was struggling for credibility anyway. She's left alone the Wellington activist bureaucrats in pointless ministries who dwell in high-rises.
So she failed the sensible Finance Minister test.
Now the supermarket state intervention. Take it on face value, National think this is a realistic option. Thats what businesses will do. They have to.
All Nicola achieved was she just gifted ACT and NZF an early Christmas present. Nationals vote.
For me the face-based issues are important but I do not think they register as important issues among a large swathe of the public. In part those who follow and believe msm TV Radio and Press would think it is old white racists and Uncle Toms grumbling. I know folk at work who are fed up with ''Maori moaning'' but it will not influence their vote. Act, NZF, Green, TOP and ther larger portion of Nat-Lab voters won't be changing their votes (TPM sure won't be). And from what I hear around me what's in the wallet and perception of what is being done or not done about that is the driving issue for a small percentage in the middle who might swing between Lab and Nat or among the parties on their side of the divide. Meanwhile radical Maori agenda and social engineering in unis, depts and schools etc continues.In the case of schools it is a place to dump the kids for the day; what they are taught is another matter and I do wonder how many parents are bothered.
The only surprising thing is Luxon didn't confirm the shops would all be handed over to the local Iwi to run. With full funding of all costs, all profits going to the Iwi.
Electorate Vote National and only Party Vote ACT or NZF.
That is the common sense strategy this election .
If, and that is a BIG IF, other 'players' in the supermarket business wanted to set up shop NZ, they would have done so, long ago.
Now what does not help the NZ buying punter in a supermarket, is where the product is sourced from -!
Be warned Kraft Heinz have 'sold off" various production lines in NZ - and "not a word from Ms Willis [ditto Fonterra], then came McCain's [Hasting Plant] - the local Mayor's had " a sing song " to MSM. then went back to work.
Did Ms Willis - 'step up ' Nah.
With this 'dear lady' why am I reminded of Ruth Richardson, a former Minister of Finance, National Party - also a failure at the level of required competency.
Oh and go watch the multitude's pass out thru check out counters at any supermarket and if you can see anyone "crying" over the amount paid at that time.
Nats panic as split seems to be favoured by public
But Nats wont target Woolworths...more clout and likely to retaliate harder?
Frankly, all we can do is give ACT our party vote to strengthen their position in the coalition negotiations that will be the real killer of this ridiculous policy.
Such actions as Ms Willis seeks to apply are not that unknown in OECD states.
The USA broke up Standard Oil in 1911 and AT&T in 1984 because of the extreme monopolistic dominance they had achieved in their respective markets.
And the EU states have frequently compelled companies that had acquired dominance in a marketplace , particularly if through merger or acquisition to rid themselves of various assets to restore market balance.
Other OECD ensure competition in the marketplace by a range of procedural remedies such as fines , price ceilings, cease and desist orders and the like to prevent anti competitive behaviour.
So Ms Willis is not quite in the same league as Joseph Stalin. Not by a long way.
Perhaps overseas investors might see her actions as her applying conventional checks and balances to an economic system
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