RODNEY HIDE: Greengrocer Czars
Everything government monopolises, it botches.
Roads: potholes and gridlock. Schools: a decade of the kids’ lives and too many still can’t read or write. Hospitals: you wait, and sometimes you die waiting. Welfare: we pay people — crooks included — not to work. The state’s core jobs are a mess. Always another review. Always another failure.
Now walk into a supermarket.
Clean. Stocked. Thousands of lines. Fresh fruit, veg, meat, milk — today, not next financial year. No ballot for bananas. No waiting list for bread. If the price is wrong or the service is rude, you leave. That’s why the shelves are full. Failure costs money.
So what does this election offer?
Politicians who can’t fix a pothole want to run the greengrocery.
National will “pursue” carving up Foodstuffs — Pak’nSave versus New World — after a Commerce Commission think-piece. Labour will police wholesale, ban “gouging,” and rewrite how shops buy stock. The Greens want KiwiMart: a state supermarket, because nothing says ripe avocados like the people who run the DHBs. NZ First wants a break-up too. Only ACT mostly says: stop strangling entry and let someone else try.
Mad. Chaotic. And revealing.
They aren’t promising better reading. Or shorter waits. Or roads that work. They’re promising to become greengrocer czars — commissioners, firewalls, forced separations, public competitors — aimed at the one place Kiwis can still buy what they need without a ticket.
Why? Because bullying a supermarket is easier than teaching a child. Easier than clearing a hospital waiting list. Easier than admitting the state’s failure is not a PR problem.
Yes, groceries can be dear. Yes, two big players deserve hard eyes on land covenants and supplier squeeze. The answer is more rivals and fewer barriers — not putting the Ministry of Everything in charge of the lettuce.
Next time you’re in the aisle, look around. The private shop works. The public monopoly still doesn’t. And the politicians who own the failure want a new job: telling you what a tomato should cost.
They should stick to the potholes. They’re not finished with those yet.
Rodney Hide is a former Minister and ACT Party leader
When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
For the Eastern Bloc parties, stranglehold control is all they know. Despite ample evidence to the contrary, they think this will work, and they certainly believe that this is what people will vote for. They are partly right - some shallow thinkers will give them their vote, but if they get in and try to make these policies work, they'll find it doesn't, and deduce that they need a bigger hammer.
I wish people would remember this is all pre election posturing and attempted vore buying. London to a brick: nothing will change after the election no matter which coalition is driving the ship MS New Zealand on to the economic rocks.
You're quite right. Governments shouldn't run supermarkets. But only governments have the muscle to deal successfully with the land covenants and supplier squeeze that you correctly suggest need "the hard eyes."
Dear Rodney
That is a very good explanation of what you think is wrong. But It does not explain what we need to do to fix what is wrong for ourselves and one another.
The real problem is a Public Service that refuses to do as its told, its headlong rush to maorify NZ. Good luck with getting anything meaningful about 'breaking up' the supermarket chains. Do any of them actually know what goes into the pricing structure and will admit to the real cost of the rules and regulations they have to deal with from inside the farm gate to the shelf of a supermarket. The maorification of NZ has a real cost thats born by everyone, including suopermarket owners, maori paying less than half in tax to what they consume, it all adds up and has to be paid by someone, the rst of NZ