Supermarkets and business groups have warned however the idea could have a chilling effect on investment.<\/a><\/p>\n Foodstuffs’ North Island chair Dean Waddell said the company was “gutted and concerned” and – in direct conflict with its goals – the proposal would drive prices higher.<\/p>\n But Willis said that claim was “extraordinary”.<\/p>\n “Decide, New Zealand, who you want to believe – the people with the vested interests and some of the highest profits in the supermarket sector internationally, or independent economic expert after independent expert who say actually with more competition prices will fall.<\/p>\n “Of course they’re going to tell you that this won’t work. They have a vested interest in the status quo. I am being dispassionate. I’ve looked at the independent economic analysis, and what that says in black and white is that a change of the sort would lead to lower prices for Kiwi shoppers.”<\/p>\n Business NZ coming out against the policy was not surprising, she said, because Foodstuffs was one of their major members.<\/p>\n She said store owners should be reassured that National had spent months doing analysis, getting peer reviews and taken the extra step of having the Commerce Commission do the implementation plan.<\/p>\n “No one’s taking their store away from them, they’ll continue to own it. No one’s taking their brand away from them, they’ll continue to have it. And we will ensure that they continue to have access to national distribution chains.<\/p>\n “This isn’t a crazy policy in which we’re expropriating your business as some other parties have proposed. This is about making sure that the Kiwi shopper gets a better deal.”<\/p>\n Christopher Luxon and Willis.<\/p>\n RNZ\/Samuel Rillstone<\/p>\n Willis also pushed back on a report that one senior National MP had described the policy as “bonkers” and raised concern about backlash, saying the National caucus was “fully on board” with the policy.<\/p>\n “I’m not in the business of responding to anonymous speculation in the media,” she said.<\/p>\n She suggested the report had probably come from “someone with a significant vested interest in the supermarket industry, rather than the MP themselves”, but asked what she based that on she said it was “just because I think that it is highly unlikely that that would have occurred”.<\/p>\n “We should be putting more emphasis on the claims from independent people without a vested interest than we are on those with a vested interest, and I think that that needs to be part of the consideration as we go through this.”<\/p>\n Multiple government policies this term have been criticised for links to the vested interests of lobbyists, with concerns about pig farming reforms matching the requests of industry<\/a>; big companies meeting secretly<\/a> with the prime minister’s office over preventing lawsuits against major emitters; and links between tobacco lobbyists and government anti-smoking policies.<\/a><\/p>\n GDP<\/p>\n Willis said the GDP data showed New Zealand’s economic resilience, with minor growth coming despite the “massive challenge” of the global oil crisis in the wake of the Iran conflict.<\/p>\n “The underlying foundations in our economy have strengthened considerably, and this provides a really good basis for future growth.”<\/p>\n Over the past year New Zealand had been “growing stronger than many of the countries we normally compare ourselves with”.<\/p>\n Labour’s deputy leader Carmel Sepuloni told reporters the slight uptick in GDP showed it was “not turning a corner at all”, with New Zealanders worse off than before the coalition came to power.<\/p>\n “They’ve taken us backwards. It’s pretty clear that compared to comparable countries, New Zealand is performing poorly, that’s under the watch of [Christopher] Luxon and Nicola Willis.”<\/p>\n Asked if it was a surprise, then to see a significant uplift for the construction sector as part of the GDP data, Sepuloni pointed to the high number of liquidations in the sector over the past three years.<\/p>\n “The government have to take responsibility for the economic condition that we as a nation find ourselves in, particularly when they look abroad and see comparable countries who are doing much better. This government cannot blame the global circumstances when other comparable countries are doing better than what we are.”<\/p>\n Willis however said Labour’s approach “of spending money that the country didn’t have” led to record inflation and “a huge debt mountain”.<\/p>\n “If you look at the past year, real GDP growth per capita is up 2 percent … by getting the ship back on an even keel, we are now starting to see the rewards. And in the past year, things have really picked up.”<\/p>\n She said the increase in construction activity “portends lots of job creation”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"National’s finance spokesperson has pushed back against criticisms from supermarkets and businesses of the party’s policy to break…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-603322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603322","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=603322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Party](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/4JK7QTR_Image_23_jfif.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n