Who owns your supermarket? Parties clash over grocery prices

Labour has not ruled out the Green Party's idea of creating a government-owned supermarket chain. Labour MP Vanushi Walters says her party will release its own plan to break up the supermarket duopoly — the situation where just two companies control most of the market — soon. (RNZ)

Walters told RNZ the two main supermarket companies control more than 80 percent of the grocery market. She pointed to what Labour did when it was in government: it banned land covenants that stopped competitors building new stores on certain sites, made the big supermarkets sell their wholesale supplies to smaller rivals, and set up a grocery commissioner to keep an eye on the industry. The party now plans to go further, though Walters did not say when. (RNZ)

The Green Party plan, launched by Chlöe Swarbrick on 5 September 2026, would create a government-owned chain called KiwiMart, focused on keeping prices low and protecting shoppers from unfair pricing. (Green Party) The plan would force Foodstuffs and Woolworths — the two companies that dominate the market — to sell 120 stores and two distribution centres to the government. That would need new laws and would cost about $2.8 billion. Swarbrick pointed to Consumer NZ research saying a government-owned supermarket as a third competitor would work well in New Zealand. (RNZ)

The Greens have also put forward a separate bill to ban supermarket price gouging, published on 17 August 2026. (Green Party)

National's Nicola Willis attacked Labour for not ruling out the Green plan, calling it "Soviet-style nationalisation" — meaning government taking over private businesses. (RNZ) Willis said she still wants a third supermarket company to enter the market and pointed to fast-track laws to make it easier to set up new supermarkets. That is a change from early 2025, when she said "all options" were on the table, including forcing the big companies to break apart. Back then, the government promised "meaningful change" to bring down food prices. (RNZ)

Labour's press team has been blunt about Willis. A party press release titled "Willis' supermarket announcement all talk, no plan," published on 13 February 2025, repeated Labour's claim that it took real action in government, including banning land covenants and forcing wholesale access. (Labour Party)

New Zealand First has also joined in, announcing a 2026 election policy in April to "break up the supermarket duopoly" and bring food prices down. The party talks about breaking the supermarkets' "stranglehold" and backing kiwi businesses, but it has not given details on exactly how it would do that, unlike the Greens' plan to force store sales. (NZ First)

The pressure is building because food keeps getting more expensive. Every category of food in New Zealand went up in price between May 2025 and May 2026. (RNZ)

The broader context is that three opposition parties — Labour, the Greens, and NZ First — are each taking a different approach to the same problem: the fact that Foodstuffs and Woolworths control most of the market. The Greens have the most detailed plan, with forced store sales, a costed price tag, and a separate price-gouging bill. Labour is keeping its options open and has not dismissed the Green plan. National, which is in government, has moved away from threatening to break up the big companies and is now focused on making it easier for new competitors to set up on their own.

The gap between what Willis said in early 2025 and what she says now is where Labour and the Greens will push their case. She said "all options" were on the table 18 months ago, including forced break-up. Her focus now on fast-track laws suggests she has narrowed those options, and opposition parties will say she has backed down. Where Labour's policy eventually lands — closer to the Greens' plan or to the rules it already set up like the grocery commissioner — will signal how far the party is willing to go on stepping into the market.

The real shift is that a government-owned supermarket, once seen as a fringe idea, is now being taken seriously by at least one party in Parliament, and Labour has not dismissed it. The Greens' KiwiMart proposal has started a conversation that National would rather have about helping private companies enter the market. How voters respond to that difference, with food prices rising across the board, will be one of the big economic arguments of the campaign.