Election 2026: Greens promise to nationalise 120 supermarkets, costing $2.8 billion

New Zealand’s Green Party wants to turn 120 Woolworths and Foodstuffs supermarkets into a publicly owned grocery chain called KiwiMart, putting the proposed cost at NZ$2.8 billion.

Green co-leaders Chlöe Swarbrick and Marama Davidson announced the policy in Auckland. The party says the Parliamentary Library costed the nationalisation of 120 stores and two distribution centres at NZ$1.3 billion. It would spend a further NZ$1.5 billion to capitalise KiwiMart as a commercially viable competitor.

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Two companies control what almost everyone in this country eats, and they take about a million dollars a day in excess profit out of our shopping baskets. That is money that should be in people’s pockets.

The chain would carry a mandate to prioritise affordability. The Greens say they would force the sale of the stores to the government to break up the supermarket duopoly.

“Two companies control what almost everyone in this country eats, and they take about a million dollars a day in excess profit out of our shopping baskets. That is money that should be in people’s pockets,” Swarbrick said. She called a publicly owned supermarket “the real solution” after successive governments failed to attract a new competitor.

The proposal follows a 2021 Commerce Commission draft market study that identified a government-backed supermarket chain as one possible way to increase competition. The commission’s final report, published a year later, did not recommend such a chain. The article also notes that New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaigned on publicly owned grocery stores, with the first stores expected to open late next year.

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Everyone agrees we need competition in the grocery sector to drive down prices, but successive governments have failed to lure one. That’s why today we are announcing the real solution: a supermarket owned by all New Zealanders, for all New Zealanders.

KiwiMart forms part of a broader Green Party food affordability package. It includes a bill banning excessive supermarket pricing, potentially extending to energy and fuel; increased Commerce Commission funding; higher penalties for companies; and a national food strategy that would establish a legal right to “adequate and nutritious food.”

The package would also create a NZ$150 million annual Fair Food Fund for community foodbanks and expand the Ka Ora Ka Ako school lunch programme to 150,000 more children. Davidson said the Greens would restore the former model of locally made, nutritious meals. The expansion and restoration would cost NZ$2.2 billion over the four-year forecast period.

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One in five children in this country live in a household that runs out of food. The Luxon Government’s response was to cut what it spends on a child’s lunch, hand the job to a handful of big companies, and destroy up to 2000 local jobs doing it.