IN NEW ZEALAND, food prices have soared to historic highs, chewing through wages and benefits alike. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has had nearly two years to act — and yet the duopoly of Foodstuffs and Woolworths still dictates what we pay and what we eat. Her 'solution', borrowed from Act Party policy, is to fast-track consents for new private supermarkets.
Unable to think outside the confines of her rigid neoliberal ideology, Willis assumes the market itself will fix the cost-of-living crisis, if she just cuts enough so-called bureaucratic 'red tape'. But as the Labour finance spokesperson Susan Edmunds has pointed out, Willis has provided no timeline when her 'third supermarket chain' will arrive. In other words, the cavalry isn’t coming — and even if it did, it would be riding the same profit-maximising horse.
In the United States, New York State Assembly member and New York's next mayor Zohran Mamdani has put forward a radically simple and straightforward idea: city-owned supermarkets whose mission is to lower prices, not extract profit. His plan would open one store in each borough, operating rent- and property-tax-free, buying and selling at wholesale prices, and centralising warehousing and distribution to strip out middle-man mark-ups.
It's an eminently sensible proposal. When the private sector is structurally incapable of delivering affordable essentials, the public sector should — and must — step in. In New Zealand, we already accept this principle in health, education, and infrastructure. Why should food — the most basic human need after water — be left entirely to the mercy of corporate boards? Their only concern is only to maximise profit and the dividend payout for shareholders.
Mamdani has framed his proposal as a 'public option' for groceries. The aim isn’t to abolish private supermarkets, but to force them to compete with a benchmark that proves lower prices are possible. In a market as concentrated and as small as New Zealand’s, this is the kind of intervention that could reset the rules.
Newstalk ZB's Heather du Plessis-Allan, a National Party cheerleader, thinks the Minister of Finance's plan is 'great'. But Nicola Willis has ignored the enormous economic obstacles that lie in wait for any overseas supermarket chain thinking of setting up shop in New Zealand. Land banking, exclusive supplier contracts, and vertically integrated distribution networks would make it almost impossible for a new private entrant to compete at scale. Even the much-heralded Costco’s arrival has done little to put downward pressure on prices in the Auckland region where it is located.
All fast tracking will do is shave a few months off the timeline for opening a new supermarket. It does nothing to address the fact that any new entrant will still be chasing the same profit margins as the incumbents. They are not going to be setting up shop in order to provide a social service. The reality is likely to be a slightly bigger cartel, not a cheaper grocery bill.
Nicola Willis has explicitly ruled out a government-owned supermarket chain — not because it wouldn’t work, but because it offends the ideological orthodoxy of her coalition government. This is politics as neoliberal theology: better to let families struggle to put food on the table than to let the state sell cheaper and affordable groceries.
It's also unfortunate, but not surprising, that the Labour Party has not taken the opportunity to propose the clear alternative of a state-owned supermarket chain. It, too, continues to resist any proposals that threaten the neoliberal orthodoxy. Indeed, Labour's Finance spokesperson Susan Edmunds says that a 'fast track regime for supermarkets make sense, even though it won’t make any immediate difference for New Zealanders who will keep paying high prices at the checkout today.' This is a pathetic response from Labour.
A state-owned supermarket chain in New Zealand could be designed to do what the duopoly will not: sell at cost on staples like bread, milk, fruit, and vegetables, using bulk procurement to drive down wholesale prices; break exclusive supplier contracts by offering fair, transparent terms to local producers; set a price benchmark that forces private competitors to match or lose market share.
Publicly owned food retail isn’t untested theory. Municipal markets in parts of Europe, state-run grocery chains in Latin America, and even small-town government-owned stores in the U.S. have shown that public intervention can stabilise prices and guarantee access. Zohran Mamdani’s proposal is a reminder that bold policy is possible even in the heart of global capitalism. If New York can contemplate a public-option supermarket, why can’t Wellington? The answer lies not in economics, but in ideology.
The cost-of-living crisis has not suddenly occurred; it is the predictable outcome of decades of market fundamentalism. A public-option supermarket is not a silver bullet, but it is a concrete, immediate step that would put downward pressure on prices, expand access, and prove that the state can deliver where the market has failed. Zohran Mamdani’s New York shows one path. Nicola Willis’s Wellington shows a dead end.
There would seem to be a lot of land given over to customer parking with supermarkets. This must involve a lot of non productive costs: land rent, interest and rates. If a government establishment could avoid all these it would certainly make a difference, but think of the howls of rage from the privately owned supermarkets.
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