Wielding a big stick
At first glance, the new regulatory plan for the supermarket duopoly had one outstanding feature: the Commerce Commission sure knows how to ruin a good punchline.
It has spent the past year or so huffing and puffing in fine Big Bad Wolf tradition, but instead of blowing the two not-so-little supermarket piggies’ houses down in the end, the final chapter has the piggies being nibbled at by some new “play nicely” regulations and a disputes-resolution process.
Given there’s a much bigger, badder wolf in town in the form of inflation, the government may have wished for the serious biffo the commission had portended:
