NZ competition bill clash: MPs warned of lobbyist imbalance and AI-driven collusion
Friday, 20 February 2026
The face of Lisa Asher, an expert in how supermarkets build pricing power, said it all.
Cut off mid-flow as she was explaining to MPs on Thursday about how supermarkets go about extracting maximum profits, she could not hide her surprise.
The Economic Development, Science and Innovation committee was supposed to be inquiring into a subject New Zealand has agonised over: competition in sectors dominated by a small number of often Australian-owned companies.
She wasn’t the only speaker who was stopped mid-flow by committee chairperson Parmjeet Parmar.
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The 10‑minute slots often weren’t enough for speakers to fully address the Commerce (Promoting Competition and Other Matters) Bill, which is intended to modernise New Zealand’s competition rules.
The hearings pitted two groups against each other.
The first were high-profile law firms opposed to the bill because it went too far in beefing up laws on predatory pricing and mergers, and even threatened to frighten overseas companies away from New Zealand altogether.
The other were under-funded, self-appointed, pro-competition watchdogs like Asher, from the University of Sydney, and Tex Edwards, anti-monopolist from Monopoly Watch and founder of 2degrees, who said the bill didn’t go far enough.
But those weren’t really the two groups fighting it out, according to Edwards.
“We might as well just be listening to Woolworths, Foodstuffs, big four energy companies, big four banks,” he told MPs.
“It's really critical that the committee understand that behind the law firms, there are clients. Those clients need to be identified for this process to be sensible.”
The law firms he was talking about were Bell Gully, Chapman Tripp and Webb Henderson, which all sent lawyers to speak at the committee hearing.
Chapman Tripp’s clients include BNZ, Chorus, Mercury, Powerco, Transpower, and Vector. One of the lawyers who presented to the committee had advised ANZ on the Commerce Commission’s market study into retail banking, and Foodstuffs on the commission’s market study into retail grocery.
Bell Gully bills itself as “trusted advisers to New Zealand's largest listed companies”.
Webb Henderson says it regularly assists companies with mergers, and when they are investigated by regulators, or with immunity and leniency applications.
Edwards protested the power of the lobbying, and the lack of consumer advocates to fight for the public, which he saw as a massive imbalance of lobbying power.
The powerful incumbents recognised that, he said.
“Most people go, ‘Thank God we've got somebody as useless as you, Tex Edwards, on the other side of the argument. And my response is, it's a sad day for New Zealand.
“You've just got the pontiffs at Monopoly Watch, trying to fight off 30,000, 20,000 lobbyists, the law firms,“ he said.
When she was cut off, Asher had been explaining to the MPs about “creeping co-ordination“ in the grocery sector, which in both Australia and New Zealand was dominated by two giant companies: Coles and Woolworths in Australia, and Woolworths and the two-related Foodstuffs companies (North Island and South Island) in New Zealand.
Asher, a New Zealander based in Australia, had already run through how supermarkets globally had used vertical integration, and own-branded/private label products to build market power, and how they had narrowed choice in a bid to drive up margins.
She warned MPs the bill was not fit for the Artificial Intelligence (AI) age, urging them to add a clause explicitly banning AI‑facilitated collusion.
This happens when companies use AI to monitor market prices, leading algorithms to automatically raise prices when competitors lift theirs.
Edwards protested about the lack of an AI component in the bill.
“It's 2026, unless I'm mistaken,” he told MPs. “Maybe I've had the wrong chip put into me this morning, but I'm sure it's 2026.
Both Asher and Edwards felt New Zealand was basing its law reforms on Australian laws.
But Asher said: “Australia hasn’t got it right, so we have to look at more mature jurisdictions.”
Edwards recommended the MPs got on a plane to Scandinavia to learn about how to do competition law well.
Counterpoint
The law firms protested that some of the things included in the new law threatened commerce.
Sarah Keene from Webb Henderson, who had represented many large overseas companies, worried clauses on predatory pricing and moves to expand the test that was designed to prevent mergers and acquisitions that lessened competition would bring New Zealand into “international disrepute”.
“Large companies, both global and local, vote with their feet. They choose where to put capital and resources, and they don’t have to engage with New Zealand,” Keene said. “If we make it too hard, they just won’t.”
Chapman Tripp’s Lucy Cooper also favoured not changing the merger competition test saying it could have adverse consequences.
Bell Gully’s Glenn Shewan felt the burden of proof in the competition test should have been altered as it was out of step with other countries. “We don’t think the merger control should start with the presumption that mergers are anti-competitive.”
Edwards told the committee that weak competition law had seen several large companies throw their hands up and leave after not being able to compete with powerful market incumbents. They were HSBC bank, and plasterboard maker Knauf.