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Arena Williams: Commerce and Consumer Affairs Spokesperson on tackling the supermarket duopoly · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Everyone's rushing to get their supermarket policies out there, aren't they?
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Who looks toughest on the prices? The Nats want to
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: split foodstuffs, creating a third retail business, so two plus one.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Labour wants to split both wholesale from retail.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: This campaign is descending into a hysteria. As soon as
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: it becomes acceptable to attack a legitimate business for short-term
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: political gain, the only question left is, who's next?
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Arina Williams, Labour's Commerce and Consumer Affairs spokesperson on the show. Arina,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: good morning. Good morning.
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Nice to have you. Very quickly, I want to start
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: with your press release you put out yesterday. In it,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: you say, National promised to fix the cost of living
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: and bring grocery prices down. Since National took office, the
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: price of bread has gone up 66%, butter 72%, beef
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: mince 36%, cheese 31%, milk 33%. Overall, has food price
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: inflation gone up by more or less than it did
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: under Labour?
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: Food price inflation has gone up on the national and
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: food prices have been consistently high. We've got two policies
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: to deal with that. One is the price gouging policy
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: that will stop that when we bring in this law
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: and price gouging will need to stop. And the next
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: is our break up for the supermarket that over time
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: will bring down prices with more competition.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: So just to clarify, nationals went up more than labours
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: or labours went up more than nationals?
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: Inflation around the world was higher when Labour was in office.
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: The point is that we need a fix for New
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: Zealand's market, where two large supermarkets dominate 80% market share
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: and can keep charging higher prices no matter what inflation
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: is doing.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: What did food price inflation, what did it go up
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: by under Labour?
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: Food price inflation was running hot around the world. In
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: countries we compared ourselves, it was between 10% and 15%.
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: New Zealand was around 12.8%.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: It was 21% up under Labour, 6.8% up under National.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: I only make the point because you're using very selective numbers,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: aren't you, with mints and cheese and milk. If you
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: could use the overall number to make yourselves look better,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: I suppose you would have. When it comes to breaking
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: up the wholesale from the retail, when does that happen?
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Does that happen in the first 100 days? Does it
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: happen immediately?
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: That happens in the first 100 days with legislation to
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: bring in the rules, which are already proposed by the
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: Commerce Commission to see the industry transition to those two wholesalers.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: National could have done this when Woolworths brought a credible
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: plan to transition the industry to separate wholesalers in 2025,
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: but they didn't.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: So what report are you basing all of this on?
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: This is based on the Commerce Commission's work in 2025-2026.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: to determine whether a wholesale retail split was something that
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: this government would oversee. But they've spent three years trying
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: to come up with a solution which wasn't a wholesale
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: retail split, which is the most sensible and straightforward breakup.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: Because they couldn't do that when Labour introduced it in 2022-23.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: They just needed something different.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: to News Talk ZB from 5 a.m. weekdays or follow
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: the podcast on iHeartRadio.