RODNEY HIDE: Clapping in heaven
Jim Anderton must be in heaven clapping his hands.
Labour promises to outlaw "price gouging" at the checkout. National promises to carve up Foodstuffs. Both say they will finally sort the supermarkets.
Both sound like him.
Hipkins has discovered excessive prices. Substantial market power. Commerce Commission with teeth. Hand back every dollar. Not your dairy. The big end of town. Butter prices are the villain and government regulation the cure.
Luxon and Willis have discovered structural separation. Pak'nSave one way, New World and Four Square the other. Three nationwide chains if you squint. First 100 days. Six months for the Commission. Legislate if it nods.
Ostensibly, an election fight.
But really a reunion tour for Alliance economics.
In the 1990s Anderton wanted control of essentials, knuckles on the Commerce Act, monopoly profits counted out. Labour flinched. National would have called it socialism and meant it.
Now Labour wears the coat. National the trousers. They race each other to out Anderton each other
Willis swears politicians will not play supermarket executive from the Cabinet table. Then she camps the Commission outside Foodstuffs with a mandate to recommend the split she’s campaigning on. Hipkins swears he will personally oversee fairness. The man who oversaw the Covid years.
Different press releases. Same instinct: prices are a moral failure, competition is something you legislate into existence, and the checkout is where you win an election.
A Foodstuffs breakup wont help. At best it rearranges the logos and adds lawyers. At worst. Costs are up. "Excessive" is not a number. It is a speech. Neither party will admit the other half of the grocery bill — tax, regulation, land, labour, energy — because that is them.
So they promise Jim's politics to each other and call it a contest.
Anderton spent a career telling them the state should lean on the big end of town until prices behaved. They used to edge away.
Now they out Anderton each other.
It’s 2026 and Labour and National are campaigning on Alliance economics. I would never have picked that.
Rodney Hide is a former Minister and ACT Party leader
Obviously the politicians will do a better job than the business owners. Just look at theis track record. Meantime, while they fight to see who is further left, I am too old to live under socialism. I am addicted to luxuries like toilet paper, electricity, food, clean water and shoes.
What happened to National, the party of free enterprise?
They, labour, greens, mad hatter's tea party, and opportunists, bear little resemblance to their party's foundation principles.
Frauds, all of them, in my book.
I have never voted for, or had any connection with either, but only ACT and NZ First have consistently stuck to their founding principiles imho.
I know which, of all the parties, I would have a higher degree of trust in, right now.
All the others are seriously photoshopped.
Today's reality is that your traditional party preference is a quite different (and dangerous in some cases) beast from what they might have been in the past.
'my family has always bought Fords' - sure, some are good,…
Anything to deflect from real meaningful reform, National’s polling must’ve told them people are concerned about day to day prices. Changing or splitting v up grocery chains won’t make any difference. Collusion is rife amongst the grocery trade. Price gouging is rampant 1kg ground coffee Au$22.00 in NZ cheapest $48.00, even allowing for freight differences bigger market however the margins in NZ have always been criminal ! Hopefully ACT can bring a bit of commonsense to the coalition !
How some politicians stuff everything up!! In front of our eyes to see.
I'm not going to tell people how to suck eggs.
The solutions obvious ACT has it.
Those that have written in before me have essentially said it all, it is the short memories unfortunately generally of the majority, that is the real issue.
Mostly socialist lefties, who think the world owes them a living, and without understanding reality, continue to blindly vote the same incompetent idiots back in.
How Hipkins, after what he did as part of the worst trio of politicians standing at the so called “pulpit of truth”can look anyone in the eye is beyond me.
Luxon, after looking like he might have the goods initially, quickly descended into more of the same, with a similar ego, but particularly stupidly sucking up to IWI, at incredible real cost, to the rest of the nation.