SEPARATION WOULD DETER INVESTMENT? "BOLLOCKS", DAVID SEYMOUR

So ACT leader David Seymour has come up with a line discredited 20 years ago in response to Minister Willis’s supermarket breakup plans.

"One obvious concern is that if your Government is trying to attract overseas investment, threats to restructure their businesses in New Zealand might have the opposite effect," he said.

Yawn! The most polite technical response to that dated and discredited far right rhetoric is “bollocks.”

That line was trotted out in the days of the Telecom breakup. Alongside lines that said any form of government intervention would destroy the civilised world as we know it.

The reality is that 99% of businesses rely on governments and their regulators to defend them against anticompetitive behaviour. Struggling grocery manufacturers, corner dairies, suppliers of specialist fruit and vegetables, and suppliers of numerous services to supermarkets are examples. They are among the thousands who will be cheering Nicola Willis on - behind the scenes because they are terrifeid of retaliatory action - in her move to dampen the powers of the handful of commercial bullies in this broken market.

Despite the issue New Zealand has with failed markets in grocery, banking and other sectors, barely a dozen businesses in this country are the miscreants. Numerically the vast majority of businesses play by the rules of fair competition.

Any investors that David Seymour thinks will be upset are themselves bullies. We don’t need them in this country.

The argument that action such as separation will deter investment is a hangover from the far-right rhetoric of the 1980s – the same mob who told us we were better off to make the rich richer because the wealth would “trickle down.”

Bollocks again.

David Seymour, with respect, should pull back. He should remind himself that in the last election 91% of New Zealanders voted against his party and stick to making sludge sandwiches for sale at Bellamys.