{"id":594394,"date":"2026-09-08T23:22:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T23:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/594394\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T23:22:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T23:22:13","slug":"labour-policy-on-breaking-up-supermarket-duopoly-to-come-vanushi-walters-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/594394\/","title":{"rendered":"Labour policy on breaking up supermarket duopoly to come, Vanushi Walters says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Weekly Political Panel: Nicola Willis and Vanushi Walters<\/p>\n

Labour’s yet to rule out the Green Party’s plan to establish a publicly-owned supermarket chain, saying it has its own policy on breaking up the duopoly in New Zealand.<\/p>\n

It comes as both Labour and National defend their records on failing to bring down grocery prices<\/a>, with all food groups recording price increases between May 2025 and May 2026.<\/p>\n

Speaking on Morning Report’s political panel, co-host Ingrid Hipkiss asked Labour’s Vanushi Walters what the party would do to even up competition in supermarkets.<\/p>\n

Walters responded only to say “New Zealanders really can’t afford three more years of this government”.<\/p>\n

“They’ve done not a thing to fix the increasing prices at the supermarket.<\/p>\n

“Nicola’s been talking a big game about a third supermarket competitor for probably more than 18 months now … but the duopoly still controls more than 80 percent of the market for grocery prices.”<\/p>\n

Walters said when Labour was in government it banned restrictive land covenants, enforced mandatory wholesale access and introduced a grocery commissioner as well.<\/p>\n

“So we didn’t just talk about change, we actually legislated for it.”<\/p>\n

\"National's<\/p>\n

National’s Nicola Willis.<\/p>\n

RNZ\/Nick Monro<\/p>\n

Hipkiss suggested those changes weren’t effective in bringing prices down.<\/p>\n

Walters said the duopoly needed to be addressed, and Labour would release policy on that soon.<\/p>\n

National’s Nicola Willis was quick to attack, saying she was astounded Walters didn’t rule out the “Soviet-style nationalisation that Chl\u00f6e Swarbrick promoted at the weekend”.<\/p>\n

Willis was referring to the Green Party policy that would aim to break up the duopoly<\/a> and drive down food prices by establishing the publicly-owned chain, KiwiMart, that would be mandated to prioritise affordability.<\/p>\n

Foodstuffs and Woolworths would be forced to sell 120 stores and two distribution centres into public ownership which would require new legislation, Swarbrick said, at a cost of about $2.8 billion.<\/p>\n

Swarbrick referenced the likes of Consumer New Zealand as identifying “it does make sense to have a publicly-owned supermarket as a third competitor”, during the announcement.<\/p>\n

Willis said on Wednesday the Greens wanted to “force supermarket owners to sell their supermarkets to the government”.<\/p>\n

“And then she wants you to put her faith in her and Chris Hipkins to run a government-run supermarket line.<\/p>\n

\"Greens<\/p>\n

Greens co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chl\u00f6e Swarbrick introduce the party’s Affordable Kai policy, September 2026.<\/p>\n

RNZ<\/p>\n

“Now, last time I heard something this grandiose, it was called Kiwi Build, and it didn’t work out well. Vanushi should just rule it out.”<\/p>\n

Morning Report co-host Hipkiss asked Willis whether she’d given up on getting a third player to enter the market.<\/p>\n

In early 2025, the government had promised “meaningful change” in order to bring down food prices<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Willis said at the time “all options” were on the table, and if competition failed to improve, ministers said they were even prepared to consider the “nuclear option” – forcibly breaking up the companies that dominate New Zealand’s grocery sector.<\/p>\n

She promised to “pull out all the stops” for shoppers paying some of the highest food prices in the developed world.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Willis told Hipkiss she hadn’t given up, and pointed to legislating fast-track capability for people to establish new supermarkets easier, “there are signs that we will make progress there”.<\/p>\n

“However, we have continued to look at the structure of the supermarket sector because in the absence of a significant national player entering the scene, there is a question about how do you get the existing supermarkets to compete harder with each other.”<\/p>\n

She said one proposal that had been discussed and looked at “carefully” was having Pak’n Save competing as a separate cooperative against Four Square and New World.<\/p>\n

“That would effectively mean you’d have three main players in New Zealand.”<\/p>\n

Walters countered this by accusing the government of removing the role of the grocery commissioner.<\/p>\n

“By removing that referee, by removing that single point of accountability, you slow down any potential changes that can be made in this area. So effectively, they’re taking us backwards.”<\/p>\n

Willis said the powers of the commissioner would remain with the Grocery Commission, but admitted the role would no longer have a title.<\/p>\n

She also added the rise of food prices was “steadier” than under the previous government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Weekly Political Panel: Nicola Willis and Vanushi Walters Labour’s yet to rule out the Green Party’s plan to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":594395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-594394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594394","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=594394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}