John MacDonald: The not-so-super rescue plan for shoppers

Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

It’s just over four years since the Commerce Commission released its first report on the supermarket sector in New Zealand and, yesterday, the Government announced what it’s going to do.

Which, in my view, will achieve nothing.

To be fair, Nicola Willis wasn’t in Government four years ago and it was Labour that received that first report and went about hiring the Grocery Commissioner.

Who, I think we can all agree, has done next-to-nothing. My supermarket bills certainly haven’t got any cheaper since he’s been at his desk.

So the Government is going to make a change to the fast track legislation specifically targeted at making it quicker for an overseas operator to move in to New Zealand and start building supermarkets here.

The law change is going to be done by Christmas and then the likes of Aldi and Lidl will be falling over themselves rushing to set-up shop here. As if.

Because it’s been my view all along that, if these overseas outfits wanted to be here, they would.

A country the size of ours means nothing to the other big operators. No matter how much red tape the Government wants to get rid of.

Bearing in mind too, that no supermarket chain is a charity.

Let’s take German operator Aldi - which is often touted as an international operator that could come here and create more competition.

It’s kind-of here already. Because it’s been registered with the New Zealand Companies Office since 2000. But it hasn’t bothered doing anything more than that - focusing on Australia, instead.

But, despite Aldi operating across the Tasman, Australians are still paying through the nose.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission put-out a report earlier this year saying that Aldi is among the most profitable supermarket chains in the world.

Prices in Australia have risen sharply over the past five years, with the supermarkets increasing profit margins during that time. Aldi being one of them.

As for Nicola Willis claiming that Costco might want to set up a few more stores, that wouldn’t make supermarket prices cheaper for people everywhere.

The Minister has acknowledged that she doesn’t see this as any sort of overnight fix. She says the lack of competition in the supermarket sector has developed over the past 20-or-30 years and told Newstalk ZB today that she’ll know this policy has worked when we have another competitor operating in all the main urban centres.

Don’t hold your breath, minister.

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