As staples such as butter soar towards $10 a block and foods once considered everyday purchases, such as cheese and eggs, lurch alarmingly toward becoming luxury items, even the most well-heeled households are having to consider just what to put in their shopping trolley.
Dr Clark also commissioned a market study of the grocery sector, work which found what many expected it to find — that supermarkets earned $1 million a day in excess profits because of a lack of competition. In response, among other things, he created the role of Grocery Commissioner as a watchdog over the duopoly which largely controls New Zealand’s grocery sector.
Not good enough, National exclaimed and almost three years later Finance Minister Nicola Willis on Wednesday announced a suite of initiatives aimed to shake up the supermarket sector.
If you were expecting fruit, vegetables or milk to miraculously have become cheaper overnight, think again.
As Dr Clark found out, and as Ms Willis is fast discovering, taking down the grocery goliaths is no easy task.
Ms Willis talked a mean game, and — as others have done — attempted to put Foodstuffs and Woolworths on notice that the government had not ruled out legislating to break the firms up, as happened once upon a time in the telecommunications sector.
But her preference — and the more likely outcome given there would be caucus, Cabinet and coalition resistance to that nuclear option — would be for new competitors to enter the sector.
Ms Willis, and others before her, have placed great faith in the notion that competition is the panacea which can cure all our checkout complaints.
Instinctively that seems possible; grocery prices are, relatively, cheaper in many countries which New Zealand compares itself to. Those countries do have a more competitive grocery sector, but then they also have more effective distribution networks and shorter distances for imported goods to travel.
The only actual example New Zealand has to offer as evidence of the potential effectiveness of competition comes from Auckland, where US giant Costco opened a shop in 2022. It is telling — either due to regulatory and anti-competitive hurdles, or some other factor — that its Westgate store has thus far been the limit of Costco’s ambition.
It is also telling that of the 24 responses to the request for information on grocery sector competition which Ms Willis issued earlier this year that neither of the two European supermarket chains which it had been hoped would be interested opening here — Lidl and Aldi — responded.
Ms Willis left the door open to hear from them any time they liked, but whether the blandishments she offered — which included what amounted to a blank cheque of a consenting process for the building of a new competitor supermarket in a one shop stop — will be enough to lure them here only time will tell.
Ms Willis promised "a big fat yes to new supermarkets" but there is little evidence that anyone is wanting to take New Zealand out for a shopping spree.
The government’s much-vaunted fast track has been opened up to one and all who might like to take on the titans, but no matter how much red tape is stripped away any firm which wishes to take the big two on will still need enormous capital expenditure to set up and deep reserves to draw upon until they are operating at a competitive scale.
Ms Willis also promised a crackdown on predatory pricing — where an established player tries to discount a rival out of business. She accepted that there were factors — but not excuses — for aggressive pricing, but will there actually be a big stick to accompany her loud talk?
Overall, the government’s enthusiasm for shaking up the grocery sector is commendable.
But there is a long way to go before ground is broken anywhere — and before the "squeezed middle" Ms Willis likes to say she stands up for see any easing of their cost of living pain.
