Nicola Willis Rejects Supermarkets’ Criticism, Pointing To ‘Vested Interests’

Russell
Palmer Political reporter

National’s
finance spokesperson has pushed back against criticisms from
supermarkets and businesses of the party’s policy to break
up Foodstuffs.

Nicola Willis was responding to the
latest GDP figures – up 0.2 percent in the June quarter –
but spent just as much time defending National’s
supermarkets policy.

She stood alongside leader
Christopher Luxon on Wednesday to announce
the plan to break up Foodstuffs – splitting the
Pak’nSave and New World brands – if a Commerce Commission
review agreed that was the best course.

Supermarkets
and business groups have warned however the idea could
have a chilling effect on investment.

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.

But Willis said
that claim was “extraordinary”.

“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.

“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.”

Business NZ coming out
against the policy was not surprising, she said, because
Foodstuffs was one of their major members.

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.

“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.

“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.”

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.

“I’m not in the business of
responding to anonymous speculation in the media,” she
said.

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”.

“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.”

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; big
companies meeting secretly with the prime minister’s
office over preventing lawsuits against major emitters; and
links between tobacco
lobbyists and government anti-smoking
policies.

GDP

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.

“The
underlying foundations in our economy have strengthened
considerably, and this provides a really good basis for
future growth.”

Over the past year New Zealand had
been “growing stronger than many of the countries we
normally compare ourselves with”.

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.

“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.”

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.

“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.”

Willis
however said Labour’s approach “of spending money that the
country didn’t have” led to record inflation and “a huge
debt mountain”.

“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.”

She said the increase in construction activity
“portends lots of job
creation”.

© Scoop Media