Thirty percent of people had to turn to friends, family, food banks or Work and Income in the past year to find food. Photo: RNZ
A third of New Zealanders have needed help accessing food in the past year, according to Consumer NZ, and its chief executive says it should be a wake-up call that the country's grocery market is not working as it should.
Consumer has carried out its latest grocery survey, which it said showed strong public appetite for government action to improve access to affordable food.
Chief executive Jon Duffy said people were struggling to find quality food at affordable prices, and they were not seeing any meaningful change at the supermarket, despite interventions such as the government's market study and the introduction of a grocery commissioner.
"We're pleased the government has kicked off a request for information process to explore how new entrants could help increase competition and deliver better grocery prices for New Zealanders. But the urgency is real."
The Consumer NZ research showed 30 percent of people had to turn to friends, family, food banks or Work and Income in the past year, to find food.
"That should be a wake up call for us," Duffy said.
"That is really concerning and goes to our ability to feed our population and we've shared the stat with the Minister of Finance, who's obviously got responsibility for supermarkets now and we were impressed with the amount of attention she paid to that.
"It's clear to me that she understands that the scope of this problem and is motivated to do something about it. So that's a good sign for New Zealand shoppers."
He said the problem of food affordability needed to be addressed and supermarkets were at the heart of that.
"We're seeing declining trust in supermarkets, but also in the government's ability to deliver better competition and more affordable food."
He said there was some "low hanging fruit" the government could tackle, such as strengthening the rules around misleading pricing and promotional activity.
"Consumers want the government to take a harder line - not only in promoting competition, but also in actively regulating how prices are set and how promotions are run," he said.
He said consumers reported pricing errors were still frequent, despite action such as the Commerce Commission filing criminal charges against Woolworths and two Pak'nSave supermarkets for inaccurate pricing and misleading specials.
"That court process will take years to play out, and at the end of it, you know, the Fair Trading Act actually doesn't facilitate big enough fines for it to be in any way a deterrent for this kind of conduct to continue.
"To fix the conduct the supermarkets need to be motivated to actually introduce systems and processes that stop pricing errors and, as it stands, they're not."
The data indicated that people were turning off supermarket loyalty programmes, too.
Forty percent said they felt schemes offered little or no benefit.
"Loyalty schemes can be quite deceptive in the impression they create that you're getting a a great deal," Duffy said.
"The other thing they do is hoover up your data and that data is then repackaged by the supermarkets and can be used to increase what they're earning from your shopping activity by selling that data elsewhere.
"We are hearing loud and clear that shoppers feel unsupported and are losing trust - not just in supermarkets, but in the laws and systems that are meant to protect them," Duffy said.
"To restore confidence, we need tougher regulation and greater enforcement to tackle pricing practices and market power in New Zealand's grocery sector."
A spokesperson for Woolworths referred to an earlier speech in which Woolworths New Zealand interim managing director Pieter de Wet said: "Our absolute focus is on giving our customers more value, convenience and a fantastic shopping experience - and we're committed to getting on with that."
Foodstuffs has also been approached for comment.
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