Can Nicola Willis do with Super Markets what Labour were too gutless to attempt?

1. There’s a technocrat class coming. The only reason why this fails is if The National Party is trying to win the next election on every stupid thing.

   • yes just another poppulist knee jerk to try to win a few votes .Just like the bleaters who bleat about taking the gst off when the benefit of that would be fuck all .You grocery bill would not be cut by 15% dreamers .

2. I got the impression from the interview that she’s a woman on a mission. So I’m crossing my fingers!

   If she’s forced to act, it begs the question: What’s the fucking point of the Commerce Commission and the clowns in it who approved the supermarket amalgamation a few years back?

3. “…meanwhile we all continue to get fucked by an under regulated market that has allowed the Supermarket duopoly to expand dominance”.

   Well, yes, its a duopoly and an under-regulated market. But the claim that half a million kiwis need Food Banks every month is not really the fault of the supermarket duopoly but indicative of wider issues. Homelessness, excessive rents, unemployment, an unstable family life, insufficient social welfare, mental illness, poor choices – you name it. Yes, more competition should lower supermarket prices – and give more choice to growers – but those who need Food Banks presumably have little or no cash anyway.

   • yes you could put a freeze on everything or lower prices by 10% and it would make no difference to the people you have listed because they dont have money to start with .Then you will have the idiots that will come back at me and say an extra $10 will make a huge difference to those people .Well no it fucken wont how is that going to help some one who earns minimum wage and pays $500 a week rent if they even have a house to rent .

4. We need to take a good hard look at the commerce commission. It was these muppets that agreed the consolidation of the supermarket industry in the first place. Other examples of ineptitude include agreeing for the generators to buy retail customers and become “gentailers”.

   So much crap and poor policy came out of the commerce commission. It needs a complete reboot and arm itself with a competition at all costs policy.

   • we need to take a good hard look at why every KIWI allows or thinks its ok to have people living in poverty .

5. Grocery costs would fall if people stopped buying fizzy drinks chips and all the prepared meals .In my NW store there whole sections full of these expensive but none essential lines yet the fresh food area gets smaller .People complain about prices yet waste money on takeaways and getting it delivered by Uber eats.We are a wasteful society.

   • Shit Trevor I have to agree with you thats quite rare .The same bleaters are happy to spent $100 a week on booze each week .People who think I am wrong just need to walk around the block on recycle day and look in the bins at all the booze and fizzy drink cans and bottles .No doubt the smoke legal and illegal stuff as well .

     • Gordon you don’t like National ideas I do not like Labour ideas but when it comes to day to day subjects our experience of life seem to often lead to the same conclusions.

       • The trouble for you Trev is that any of the very rare good ideas that National has are usually pinched from Labour and then tweaked to conform to what is acceptable to their donors. That tweaking works against the poor or low/middle income demographics.

         • Yes I cannot agree with Trevor and come to a conclusion that increasing unemployment whilst giving landlords massive tax breaks is a good thing.
           As for Willis if it’s anything like Collins ” fix” on power prices I suspect it’s just all talk, after all, National are tanking in the polls and to the masses, just like her tax cuts, it sounds good. In reality it’s the opposite, tax cuts were a scam but won voters, I don’t believe people will be so gullible again.

         • I see you have not acknowledged 2 new ferries with rail capacity not second hand ones that you talked about .Apologies accepted

     • Not everyone is on the same budget as Trevor and P n Save is their only option, not New World.

   • Ah Trevor, you’re not wrong. I’d add we’ve become a bit lazy too, seduced by convenience. Fresh food? Yes, its hard to spot once you get past the obligatory entrance way. I look around and everywhere I see packets, boxes, bottles, jars, cans. Much of it good stuff. But sometimes I think I’m in a place far from where I ought to be.

   • You have a sensible comment Trevor although many people use their taste buds instead of their brains when making decisions so it’s unlikely that they will follow your good advice. It would be nice if people had secure employment and housing so they could have a decent garden as well along with things like a sugar tax to discourage unhealthy habits although that would reduce corporate profits so is unlikely to happen.

6. Firstly Labour has already done the spade work on this .Willis will not deliver as in the case of the ferries where Labour did the spade work and she sank them at the gravy stroke .Those ferries would be built by now ready fro sea trials and delivery next year ,but no her orgasim with the skin head gang leader saw her lose the plot and skuttle them so now we have to wait 5 years for a couple of minis when we could all be sailing in a Rolls royce from next year and arriving at a state of the art port facillity .
   Secondly there is not the population for a third chain of stores .Aus has 26 million people and only 3 main chains .
   Then she could make the current players sell stores to a new entrant which may result in them selling stores in places like Otorohanga and Te Kuiti .They will retain all of the big city stores as that where the massive turnover happens .

7. Yet another smoke screen so they can pretend to be doing something when in fact the donners have already said no .In the mean time the real POVERTY in NZ gets worse by the day along with the crime and unemployment .

   • Spot on Gordon but I doubt kiwis will be sacked in again like the tax cut scam.

8. Are high food prices really the big problem? Or is it that people are burdened with other costs (eg rent) that leaves less to be spent on groceries?

   It is easy to paint the big supermarket chains as the bad guys, but they are not the root cause of people’s diminished purchasing ability.

   • I think you are right on the button .It is the total cost of living and the way we live that is the problem. Most demand ever vegetable is perfect with no blemishes hence vast wastage. Best before dates cause wastage of good products.I assist once a week in preparation of a free meal which is made using items discarded by supermarket and it is still fine a week after the date.

   • 100% correct they are just another symptom not the cause .If we look at the UK THEY HAVE 65 MILLION PEOPLE and cheaper food which they import from other nations that have massive hot houses and growing factories while local cauliflower are rotting in the fields .

   • I have not seen food to income ratios but I know that rent to income has increased dramatically and is a major cause of poverty. The problem with food prices is that healthy food tends to be expensive and unhealthy food is cheap ( thankfully there’s an abundance of fresh cheap produce now) which has health issues.

9. It looks like no third commercial player is that interested in entering the NZ market – they would be too far behind on physical and human infrastructure and the market is not that big anyway. Therefore, Willis claims to want to tinker with breaking them up – one can easily imagine a horizontal separation such as retailer-wholesaler where the retailer can choose among different, competing retailers. But a vertical separation (region?, product lines?) doesn’t seem to really address the supposed problem of a lack of competition. In any case, it will be tied up forever in consultation and legal challenges. And even if something does happen, the chances are that the benefit to the poorest among us will be extremely niggardly.

   There’s a bigger problem though. Can markets ever be made to work in the public interest – or are they intrinsically geared to maximise private interest? If markets have a natural tendency to locate market power in fewer and fewer hands, is the solution to reconstitute the market by breaking up big players and then let the whole process start over again? Nicola Willis seems like the 16th and 17th century devotees of the Ptolemaic view of the solar system, who had to add epicycles on epicycles onto the orbits of planets to explain observable data – rather than accept a heliocentric solar system. She is determined to maintain the current model of how the economy works even if it involves vastly complex, costly and inefficient work.

10. Labour and the left may well be outflanked by National on this issue, as in many other areas. Globally the right is in the ascendant because it has dared to challenge the social and economic dogmas of neo-liberalism and to adopt innovative “populist” approaches to politics. The right is also seen as the side that can best bring peace in place of the forever wars of the left.
    The public’s judgement of the left is substantially correct. However the hopes that they have vested in the right will end in disillusion. From the viewpoint of ordinary people the economic and political systems of western capitalism are fundamentally defective. Within the system the right has gained a tactical advantage from its ability to see the problems of neo-liberalism, even if its proposed solutions are manifestly inadequate to the challenge.
    National may well challenge the retail and banking cartels, because “someone has to” and Labour will not. After all, neoliberalism is Labour’s baby, and it cannot bring itself to administer the kind of stern discipline necessary to bring its errant child into line.
    Many ordinary working people have moved to the right, even the far right, out of a gut sense that only the right will challenge a seriously flawed and fracturing social order. That may be true but only up to a point. To make a decisive correction the nation will have to walk away from both the colonialist left and the colonialist right and re-establish rangatiratanga as the mode of government for te motu katoa.

11. Short answer no she can’t and we are delusional if we think so.
    Ask yourself, if Australia is fighting an election right now on cost of living issues as other countries have recently how the hell do you think this muppet can make NZ any better. Aldi and the likes have not done anything for Australia despite what you read.
    And do you think they will set up opposite every Supermarket in NZ. No they will take Willis to the cleaners and then cherry pick in Auckland and Christchurch and provincial NZ will pick up the tab.

12. You’re on to something AB. The bigger problem. That’s the elephant in the room!

13. Ready to eat meals and uber eats are even more popular with the poor in wealthier nations like Australia so what’s you point? Mc Donald’s isn’t some 5 star restaurant luxury. It’s supposed to be a family restaurant but oh no, tut tut tut. I mean come on.

    I don’t believe for a second that you or anyone else act with evil intent. Charity and giving to the poor was exactly what Jesus Christ preached. Something The National Party used to believe in.

    Proverbs 19:17 states, “Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed.”

    What this verse means to me is that those who are charitable to the poor not just in the acts/works is by god as a loan to him. Which he repays with blessings and rewards.

    Now say it with me my brother – “Amen.”

14. Really Andrew let’s hope her mission isn’t anything like her new ferries mission (mission impossible) cause if so, it will be more millions down the toilet another words, she is full of shit.

15. Really Andrew let’s hope her mission isn’t anything like her new ferries mission (mission impossible) cause if so, it will be more millions down the toilet another words, she is full of shit. And can she fix the greedy banks and power companies while she is on her mission.

16. Housing costs is even worse than food prices once you pay your rent if you’re a renter there is buggar all left for food

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