{"id":591505,"date":"2026-09-06T01:48:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T01:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/591505\/"},"modified":"2026-09-06T01:48:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T01:48:09","slug":"election-2026-greens-promise-to-nationalise-120-supermarkets-costing-2-8-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/591505\/","title":{"rendered":"Election 2026: Greens promise to nationalise 120 supermarkets, costing $2.8 billion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cEveryone agrees we need competition in the grocery sector to drive down prices, but successive governments have failed to lure one. That\u2019s why today we are announcing the real solution: a supermarket owned by all New Zealanders, for all New Zealanders.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2021, the Commerce Commission\u2019s market study into the grocery sector draft report suggested a Government-backed new supermarket chain<\/a> might be an option to increase competition \u2013 although the final report, published a year later, did not recommend it.<\/p>\n

Overseas, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is a popular figure in the global progressive movement, ran on a platform of establishing publicly owned grocery stores in the city.<\/a> The first stores are set to open late next year.<\/p>\n

KiwiMart was one of several in the Greens\u2019 wider policy targeting food affordability.<\/p>\n

Other policies included a bill to ban excessive pricing at supermarkets, which could be extended to other sectors like energy and fuel; increasing funding for the Commerce Commission and hiking penalties for firms; a National Food strategy that would include legislating people\u2019s right to \u201cadequate and nutritious food\u201d, establishing a $150 million a year \u201cFair Food Fund\u201d for community foodbanks and expanding the school lunches programme, Ka Ora Ka Ako to 150,000 more children. <\/p>\n

Co-leader Davidson said the Greens would also revert to the old school lunches model with locally made meals that had high nutritional value. The cost of expanding the programme and reverting to the old model would be $2.2b over the four-year forecast period.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne in five children in this country live in a household that runs out of food. The Luxon Government\u2019s response was to cut what it spends on a child\u2019s lunch, hand the job to a handful of big companies, and destroy up to 2000 local jobs doing it,\u201d Davidson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHalf of those lunches now fail to meet nutrition standards. Children who miss meals are two to four years behind their classmates in maths, reading and science. We will restore Ka Ora, Ka Ako, put it back in the hands of schools and local providers and expand it so 150,000 more tamariki [children] get a decent lunch every day,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

The total cost over four years for the plan was about $6.2b.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cEveryone agrees we need competition in the grocery sector to drive down prices, but successive governments have failed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[26589,2246,41051,8613,54760,5232,15559,5903,58925,108497,2518,23746,291255,291254,111,43,139,69,4762,10010,15483,97,7227,61,92],"class_list":["post-591505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-26589","tag-2246","tag-41051","tag-billion","tag-costing","tag-create","tag-elected","tag-election","tag-foodstuffs","tag-governmentowned","tag-green","tag-greens","tag-kiwimart","tag-nationalise","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-party","tag-promise","tag-promising","tag-supermarket","tag-supermarkets","tag-to","tag-woolworths"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591505","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=591505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}