one for New World and Four Square, and another for Pak\u2019nSave.<\/a><\/p>\nAnother option is separating supermarkets\u2019 retail operations from their wholesaling.<\/p>\n
Seymour said Act opposed separation because it sent a bad message to people who invested money in opening new supermarkets. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf you start forcibly dividing companies, the first thing that happens is that they won\u2019t invest,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you want to have more investment , more competition in the supermarket industry, the worst thing you could possibly do is send a message that if you invest in New Zealand your property is at risk,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Labour leader Chris Hipkins said his party would \u201cabsolutely\u201d look at policy on separating supermarkets if that was required.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been talking to the Government about that for the last three years \u2013 we\u2019ve been saying to them, \u2018if you need our support because Act and NZ First are vetoing what you are trying to do, come and talk to us\u2019,\u201d Hipkins said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve chosen not to, so ultimately Nicola Willis has to bear responsibility for making big promises that she hasn\u2019t delivered.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked whether he would break up supermarkets if needed, Hipkins said \u201call options\u201d would be \u201con the table\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need a more competitive supermarket sector,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
![\"Labour]()
Labour Party commerce spokeswoman Arena Williams.<\/p>\n
Willis later noted that Hipkins\u2019 comments contemplating separation appeared at odds with those made by the party\u2019s commerce spokeswoman, Arena Williams, in the Post, in which Williams said the party did not support banner separation along the lines NZ First was proposing.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs per usual, he has a different position from his spokesperson … perhaps he should sort out what his own party\u2019s position is before he asks me about mine,\u201d the Finance Minister said. <\/p>\n
Williams told the Herald that the party did not agree with banner separation like NZ First had proposed, but was interested in splitting the wholesale and retail parts of supermarkets.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Government we were looking for more market access for growers, manufacturers and retail competitors from a wholesale-retail split of the supermarkets.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will be no surprise to any of the suppliers, growers and retailers we\u2019ve been working alongside that it\u2019s wholesale\/retail where Labour is looking for more competition now. Competition in this part of the market is not improving,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She said she had confirmed \u201cmultiple times\u201d that she was receiving advice on supermarket competition reform. She was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1665,9218,95809,10166,4596,5903,246,23546,8454,302,52234,6721,121117,8461,96471,6722,111,43,139,20484,69,1118,5908,90,5493,141991,3048,312,6089,544,97,61,1533,792],"class_list":["post-538821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-advice","tag-before","tag-breakup","tag-businesses","tag-competition","tag-election","tag-finance","tag-forcing","tag-including","tag-its","tag-kinds","tag-labour","tag-lid","tag-lift","tag-merits","tag-minister","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nicola","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-official","tag-on","tag-open","tag-publish","tag-said","tag-says","tag-separation","tag-some","tag-supermarket","tag-to","tag-will","tag-willis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}