With New Zealand’s November 7 general election now just
over six weeks away, the country’s main capitalist parties
are deeply unpopular.
A Post/Freshwater Strategy Poll
released on September 15 confirmed both the National Party,
which leads the coalition government, and the opposition
Labour Party are registering below 30 percent support. Post
editor Matthew Hooton noted that it is the first time since
the National Party was formed in 1936 that the two main
parties have been “so unpopular at the same
time.”
A majority of voters, 56 percent, believe the
country is going in the wrong direction, while just 27
percent think the opposite. Labour, however, has not
benefited from this sentiment and does not present itself as
any alternative to the current
government.
Increasingly nervous about their
collapsing support, the major parties last week announced
policies ostensibly to address the soaring cost of living,
targeting the groceries sector. The hypocrisy is
breathtaking: For years successive governments led by both
parties have presided over soaring inflation, while driving
down wages.
Both parties are now making demagogic
proposals to reorganise New Zealand’s supermarket chains.
New Zealand’s grocery retail market is dominated by two
major companies: Foodstuffs—which owns New World, Four
Square and PAK’nSAVE—and Woolworths. The duopoly
controls 82 percent of the grocery sector and garners among
the highest per-store revenues in the world.
According
to a 2022 Commerce Commission report, together they generate
$NZ1 million a day in excess profit above what they would
make in a properly “competitive” market. The Commission
noted that Foodstuffs had margins of more than 6 percent,
the second-highest globally and ahead of Coles, Walmart,
Tesco, Sainsbury and Carrefour.
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On September 16
Finance Minister Nicola Willis made an unexpected
announcement that National would pursue the structural
separation of Foodstuffs “so Kiwis get a fairer deal at
the checkout.” The forced restructure would create two
separate grocery chains, with New World and Four Square in
one and PAK’nSAVE the other. Both would ostensibly be
competing against the Australian-owned conglomerate
Woolworths.
Willis’ announcement was so abrupt it
reportedly caught the caucus off guard and was widely
interpreted as a panicked manoeuvre. David Seymour, leader
of the right-wing ACT party in the coalition denounced it as
“desperate and visionless campaigning driven more by focus
groups than economic policy.”
Prime Minister
Christopher Luxon justified the policy by declaring that
National is “the party of competition.” It is far from
certain that the measure will be implemented: National is
proposing an independent Commerce Commission assessment
first, expected to take at least six months.
Labour
Party leader Chris Hipkins earlier last week made a vague
promise to make price gouging illegal by prohibiting
supermarkets from taking “unreasonable” profit
margins.
Within days of Willis’ announcement,
however, Labour suddenly produced its own policy to make the
two supermarket chains run their wholesale supply businesses
independently from their retail stores. Hipkins said Labour
“will crack down on big companies ripping you off, and
we’ll take immediate action on grocery
prices.”
Foodstuffs and Woolworths control most of
the wholesale supply which small grocers depend on. Labour
promises to remove “anti-competitive” rules that stop
small stores from lowering their prices, switching to
another chain or going independent.
The far-right
populist NZ First Party, which is part of the ruling
coalition, has also declared it would legislate to break up
Foodstuffs into two cooperatives.
Labour’s ally the
Green Party also proposes to break up the duopoly but says
it would do so by purchasing 120 Woolworths and Foodstuffs
supermarkets and two distribution centres to create a
state-owned chain, called KiwiMart. This policy will not be
implemented by a Labour-led government, but even if it was,
the Greens are unable to say how much money working people
would eventually save.
A few media commentators have
sought to raise expectations of real change. A Post
editorial on September 9 praised the Greens’ idea for “a
powerful third player” to address “a lack of supermarket
competition.” Gareth Hughes, a former Green MP, told Radio
NZ on September 21 that the “very strong policies”
announced by Labour and National “signals the end of this
very hands-off neoliberal approach which has been dominant
for the last 40-plus years.”
In fact, there is no
reason to believe that any of the parties’ proposals would
actually lead to lower prices. Their record demonstrates
that they will take no action that seriously undermines
supermarket profits.
The last Labour-Greens government
appointed a dedicated Grocery Commissioner in 2023. Commerce
and Consumer Affairs Minister Duncan Webb said the new role
would ensure “increased competition in the grocery
industry, and for the benefit of Kiwi consumers.”
A
report by the Commerce Commission in June 2026, however,
found there had been no significant change. Annual food
price inflation was 4.6 percent—more than double the
increase in wages—and grocery prices were rising further
due to the US-Israeli war of aggression against
Iran.
Retail prices and profits are determined
fundamentally by the operations of the global market. New
Zealand is a major international exporter of meat, fish and
dairy products, but working-class consumers frequently find
them unaffordable because they are forced to pay global
market prices.
The escalating cost of food and other
necessities is due to policies pursued by the capitalist
ruling class, which is transferring the cost of its own
crises onto the working class.
Real wages have been
pushed down by 6.4 percent between 2021 and 2026, with the
collaboration of the trade union bureaucracy. Following an
historic “mega strike” by 100,000 public sector workers
in October 2025, the unions refused to organise any further
joint strikes and pressured teachers, nurses and healthcare
workers to accept real wage cuts.
Meanwhile, according
to Stats NZ, from June 2024 to June 2026, the prices of
everyday household staples skyrocketed. A two-litre bottle
of milk has risen from $4.00 to $6.90 in some stores, while
other increases included 28.2 percent for beef mince, 42
percent for butter and 67.6 percent for bread. There was
also a 21.4 percent rise for electricity and 17.2 percent
for petrol.
The surge in prices is an international
phenomenon. Following the 2008 financial crash and the 2020
crisis triggered by the pandemic, governments printed
hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up the financial
markets and the fortunes of the super-rich, producing a
surge in inflation. The US-NATO proxy war against Russia,
including economic sanctions, followed by the war against
Iran, have further driven up prices, sparking mass protests
throughout the world.
Whichever combination of
capitalist parties makes up the next government, the
cost-of-living crisis will continue and worsen. The task
facing workers is to break politically from all these
parties and to unite internationally against the capitalist
system, which is plunging the world into poverty, war and
barbarism.
The struggle for the socialist
reorganisation of society includes the demand for public
ownership of the supermarket chains and food producing
industries, under the democratic control of the working
class.
By John Braddock, Socialist Equality
Group
23 September 2026
Original url: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/09/23/cict-s23.html
