Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Andrew Dickens: Cost of living's become an election issue and supermarkets are getting the blame

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Andrew Dickens: Cost of living's become an election issue and supermarkets are getting the blame · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So the cost of living is once again a key
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: issue in the election. I always find it amazing that
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: somehow New Zealanders believe it's a problem that only affects us.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: But you just heard Vicky Price. It's happening all over
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Europe in all sorts of different ways. But here, when
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: we talk about the cost of living, all the blame
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: gets heaped on supermarkets. Our duopoly of big old supermarkets
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: are viewed with suspicion with many, including politicians believing they're
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: rorting us and every party's got some sort of proposal
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: to rein them in. So National and New Zealand First
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: want to break the duopoly up forcibly. That's classic command
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: economy style, normally associated with the left, but they don't
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: seem to mind. The Green Party want to spend billions
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: on a state-owned Kiwi Mart. And ACT just wants to
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: cut all the red tape so overseas competitors come in. Yesterday,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Chris Quinn from Foodstuffs appeared on Q & A to
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: defend supermarkets. And he pointed out in his conversation with
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Simon Mursip that we are the 13th cheapest grocery market
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: in the OECD. He also pointed out the lack of
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: margin for supermarkets. They're not huge money machines necessarily. They
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: make 2.3 cents in the dollar. And all of this
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: are very important points. Our supermarkets seem profitable purely because
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: of the sheer volume of sales they put through. Because
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: the mega supermarkets we shop at each day don't really
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: exist for much of the world. More intensified cities don't
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: have the big supermarkets that we do. We drive and
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: we buy in bulk. In Europe, they walk with a
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: trundler and they shop more often. Now, the ignorance of
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: the economies of supermarkets is what has driven the outrage
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: in New Zealand, and the politicians are just following the
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: outrage for approval. Now, of course, like everybody, I've got
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: a problem with the cost of living, but I do
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: not have a problem with the duopoly of supermarkets in
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: this little country of ours. In fact, their very size
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: makes stuff an awful lot cheaper than it could be.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: But now we have a load of politicians of all
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: colours sticking their noses into what I would call our
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: personal property rights. And that doesn't sit well with me
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: at all.