Andrew Dickens: Cost of living's become an election issue and supermarkets are getting the blame

The cost of living is once again a key issue in the election.

But what seems strange to me is that somehow New Zealanders believe it’s a problem that only affects us. A cursory skim through international papers shows it’s an issue for every market on earth.

Here much blame has been heaped on supermarkets.

Our duopoly of massive supermarkets are viewed with suspicion with many, including politicians believing they’re rorting us and every party having some sort of proposal to reign them in.

National and New Zealand First want to break the duopoly up forcibly in classic command economy style normally associated with the left.

The Green Party want to spend billions on a state owned Kiwimart.

While ACT just want to cut red tape.

So yesterday Chris Quin from Foodstuffs appeared on Q + A to defend supermarkets.

He pointed out we are the 13th cheapest grocery market in the OECD and that supermarkets make 2.3 cents in the dollar.

This is a very important point. Our supermarkets seem profitable purely because of the volume of sales they put through.

The Mega supermarkets we shop at each day don’t really exist for much of the world. More intensified cities don’t have the big supermarkets. We drive and buy in bulk. In Europe they walk with a trundler and shop more often.

The ignorance of the economies of supermarkets is what has driven the outrage and the politicians are just following the outrage for approval.

I’ve got a problem with the cost of living, but I don’t have a problem with the duopoly. In fact, their very size makes an awful lot cheaper than it could be.

And now we have a load of politicians of all colours sticking their noses into personal property rights and that doesn’t sit well with me at all.

Andrew Dickens is a broadcaster with Newstalk ZB. - where this article was sourced.