You Can’t Force Competition.

High grocery prices are real.

New Zealand’s supermarket duopoly deserves scrutiny. If Foodstuffs or Woolworths are abusing their market power, making excess profits through anti-competitive behaviour, or blocking competition, then the Commerce Commission should go after them.

But forcing private owners to sell 120 stores so the Government can run the aisles is something else entirely.

The Greens have proposed KiwiMart, a new state-owned supermarket chain they say would take around 15% of the grocery market.

But they’re not proposing to build 120 new stores.

They want legislation that would force Foodstuffs and Woolworths to sell around 120 existing supermarkets and two distribution centres to the Crown, at an estimated cost of $2.8 billion.

This isn’t attracting a third competitor. It’s using the power of the state to take a chunk of the existing market and transfer it into public ownership.

And for what?

When questioned this week, the Greens couldn’t say how much cheaper groceries would actually be under KiwiMart. They don’t intend to set prices directly either. Instead, experts would determine what counts as an excessive price or profit.

So the forced sale is concrete. The savings aren’t.

That should concern us, regardless of how we feel about supermarkets.

Foodstuffs and Woolworths are big, powerful companies. They’re not exactly going to win a public sympathy contest. But if Parliament can force private owners to sell their property because the cause is popular and the politics work, we should think very carefully about the precedent that creates.

Because today it’s supermarkets. Tomorrow, who knows?

There are plenty of ways to increase competition, break down barriers to entry and hold powerful companies accountable without giving the Government a blank cheque to acquire private businesses by force.

You can believe groceries should be cheaper without believing the state should own the supermarket.

PILLAR exists because good intentions should never be a blank cheque for government power.

Protecting individual life, liberty, and rights includes the right not to be forced to sell your property just so the state can retail the milk.