89% of Voters Want Supermarket Reform

So much for a moratorium while we wait for final election results! Barely 36 hours after Saturday night’s initial count, the Act party was back hogging the airwaves demanding that the other parties drop their pledges to deal with our failed supermarket sector.

Seriously? Don’t Act realise that every other significant party campaigned on dealing, one way or other, with the issue which is right at the forefront of our cost of living crisis? Even London’s Financial Times headlined its article on the New Zealand election as New Zealand’s “Supermarket Election.”

More than 89% of the Kiwis who voted, voted for a party that promised one way or another to deal decisively with the duopoly. That’s effectively 9 out of every 10 voters.

Yet here we go again – Act demanding its own way as though it had won 90% of the vote, not 11%.

Isn’t this a democracy? Aren’t politicians expected to take note of public opinion?

The campaign by Foodstuffs to defend their ill-gotten empire has been extraordinary for its intensity. Fellow duopolist Woolworths, commendably, has been more restrained. Heaven knows how much Foodstuffs’ campaign has cost. I'm sure they can afford it.

Then there are business organisations. Some, not all. Again, I am sure the duopolists pay them very healthy fees, sponsorships and the like. But these groups presumably also represent hundreds or thousands of businesses that suffer from these broken markets. Growers. Manufacturers. Independent corner dairies. Bigger groups like Night and Day and The Warehouse that have been trying to break into this market for decades but been deliberately blocked by land banking and other dirty tricks. Local producers who’ve been shut down in favour of imports to save a fraction of a percent in cost.

Don’t groups like Business New Zealand realise that for incumbents to deliberately destroy competition and its essential role in the market is the commercial equivalent to infanticide? A whole generation of new businesses is being squeezed out so that the voracious greed of incumbents can be satisfied. But those smaller businesses are (were?) our big businesses of the future. At the very least the business groups should be acknowledging their interests as well – even though no doubt they are less influential within the organisations.

Speaking of the intensity of the Foodstuffs campaign, I’ve personally felt the heat. A month ago I received an email out of the blue from a former very top executive of Foodstuffs North Island. In my 60 year career it would qualify as the most arrogant, abusive communication I have ever received - the kind of language that if one of my teenage grandkids had drafted it, they would get a reprimand from hell!

I chose not to dignify him with a reply. But it brought home to me the ugly venom and intensity with which Foodstuffs are approaching this issue and the kind of position they are reflecting to their store owners and staff. They unquestionably have a case to answer and should try to be far more mature and more adult in responding.

So politicians, please keep your powder dry. Don’t be sucked in by the endless ranting of the libertarians.

Competition is the friend of capitalism, not the enemy, and when it is demonstrably broken governments have a responsibility to fix it. That is best done by giving social license to our experts, the Commerce Commission, and letting them nut out the details.

That’s what 89% of us voted for!