Labour won't rule out publicly-owned supermarkets as Greens push KiwiMart plan

Labour has not ruled out the Green Party's plan to set up a publicly-owned supermarket chain, with MP Vanushi Walters saying the party will release its own policy on breaking up the supermarket duopoly soon. (RNZ)

Walters told RNZ the duopoly controls more than 80 percent of the grocery market. She pointed to Labour's record in government, where it banned restrictive land covenants (rules that stop competitors building on certain sites), enforced mandatory wholesale access (requiring the big two to sell their supplies to smaller rivals), and introduced the grocery commissioner to oversee the sector. The party now intends to go further with fresh policy, though Walters did not specify a release date. (RNZ)

The Green Party policy, launched by Chlöe Swarbrick on 5 September 2026, proposes a publicly-owned chain called KiwiMart, aimed at keeping prices down and protecting shoppers from unfair pricing. (Green Party) The plan would force Foodstuffs and Woolworths to sell 120 stores and two distribution centres into public ownership. That would require new legislation at an estimated cost of about $2.8 billion. Swarbrick referenced Consumer NZ findings that a publicly-owned supermarket as a third competitor would make sense in the New Zealand market. (RNZ)

The Greens have also announced 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 proposal, calling it "Soviet-style nationalisation." (RNZ) Willis said she had not given up on getting a third supermarket player into the market and pointed to legislating fast-track capability to make it easier to establish new supermarkets. Her position marks a shift in emphasis from early 2025, when she said "all options" were on the table, including the "nuclear option" of forcibly breaking up the companies that dominate the grocery sector. At that time the government promised "meaningful change" to bring down food prices. (RNZ)

Labour's press team has been blunt in its critique of Willis. A party press release titled "Willis' supermarket announcement all talk, no plan," published on 13 February 2025, restated Labour's claim that it took bold action in government, including banning restrictive land covenants and enforcing mandatory wholesale access. (Labour Party)

New Zealand First has also entered the frame, announcing a 2026 election policy in April to "break up the supermarket duopoly" and bring food prices down. Its policy framing emphasises breaking the supermarkets' "stranglehold" and backing kiwi businesses, though the party has not detailed a mechanism comparable to the Greens' forced divestment model. (NZ First)

The political pressure around grocery prices comes against a backdrop of sustained increases. All food groups in New Zealand recorded price increases between May 2025 and May 2026. (RNZ)

The broader context here is that three opposition parties — Labour, the Greens, and NZ First — are now each running distinct policy lines on the same structural problem: the Foodstuffs-Woolworths duopoly. The Greens are the most prescriptive, with a forced divestment mechanism, a costed price tag, and a dedicated price-gouging bill. Labour is keeping its options open, pointedly declining to rule out the Green model while promising its own policy. National, now in government, has moved from threatening the "nuclear option" to a more incremental line centred on fast-track consenting and attracting a third player organically.

The gap between Willis's early-2025 rhetoric and her current position is where Labour and the Greens will press their case. Willis said "all options" were on the table 18 months ago, including forced break-up. Her current emphasis on fast-track legislation suggests a narrowing of those options, and opposition parties will frame that as retreat. Where Labour's eventual policy lands — closer to the Greens' structural intervention or to regulatory measures building on the grocery commissioner and wholesale access regime it already set up — will be a key signal of how far the party is willing to go on market intervention heading into the 2026 election.

The notable shift is that publicly-owned grocery retail, once a fringe idea, is now being treated as a serious policy proposition by at least one parliamentary party, with the official opposition declining to dismiss it. The Greens' KiwiMart proposal has forced a conversation that National would rather frame around enabling private-sector entry. How voters respond to that framing difference, in a context of across-the-board food price increases, will be one of the defining economic arguments of the campaign.