Battle for the future of the Commerce Commission
Sunday, 31 May 2026
ANALYSIS: A battle for the future of the Commerce Commission is playing out in Parliament with business lobbyists seeking to clip the competition regulator’s wings, while the country’s leading anti-monopolist says the commission should be made more powerful.
On Wednesday lawyers who act for big business urged MPs on the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee to recommend changes to the Commerce (Promoting Competition and Other Matters) Bill to restrain the regulator’s ability to comment freely on market issues, and to advocate for competition law change.
The bill would modernise the way the commission was run, but Simon Peart from Chapman Tripp, flanked by colleague Lucy Cooper, told MPs the bill would also give the commission wider powers than it currently had.
Peart and Cooper objected to a portion of the bill referring to the commission “issuing warnings, reports, guidelines, or otherwise commenting, on ‘any matter’ relating to competition, whether in relation to individual entities or more generally”.
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Peart said that was allowing the commission to engage in a wider set of tasks than it usually carried out.
“The suggestion that the commission has a role in just commenting generally on things that it sees in markets, which it might like or not like, creates a lot of uncertainty for businesses,” he told MPs, just days after the commission invited prominent competition activists to speak at its annual conference.
He said that would carry the suggestion of commission using the “coercive power of the state to just intervene when it sees things that it just doesn't like the look of”.
Chapman Tripp’s view mirrored several written submissions.
The BusinessNZ lobby group felt the bill give the commission a “potentially broad and highly discretionary mandate” that extended beyond traditional enforcement of competition law.
“It risks positioning the commission as an active market commentator and influencer of commercial behaviour outside formal regulatory processes, with implications for certainty and predictability,” BusinessNZ said in its application.
Peart also objected to the bill requiring the commission to keep commerce legislation under review.
He told MPs: “Because the commission’s primary role is as an enforcer of New Zealand’s competition laws, we have some concerns with the idea that the commission would also have a formal role in saying what those laws ought to be from time to time, or whether they’re functioning in a way that is intended.”
His words came just days after Finance Minister Nicola Willis heeded calls from the commission chair John Small to increase penalties under the Fair Trading Act, which were woefully small compared to fines in peer countries like Australia and the United Kingdom.
Hidden power of the business lobby
Peart and Cooper were followed at the select committee by anti-monopolist Tex Edwards, who called them out for not disclosing to MPs who their clients were.
“I think we need to highlight … the previous presentation from Chapman Tripp,” Edwards said.
“What's wrong with the rules here is that they're not disclosing who they're working for. They work for Foodstuffs, Mercury, Genesis, ANZ, and they're pretending to be legal experts. Essentially, they're working as lobbyists here,” Edwards said.
Edwards objected to the idea that the commission should not be able to tell Parliament about whether competition law was working.
The process of lawmaking was “skewed by lobbyist influence swamping”, he said.
He said in the consultations in the development of the law, big business and its lobbyists were consulted, while consumer voices were absent.
Instead of limiting the commission, Edwards said the commission was “the subject matter expert” on how the law should be crafted, and it was not “swamped with lobbyist influence” like Parliament.
He called for the commission to be put on an equal footing with the Reserve Bank, which regulates banks and is tasked with guarding the stability of the financial system
“It's time to allow the Commerce Commission to be independent like the central bank,” Edwards said. “This legislation proposed doesn't do that.”
He said: “If we looked at the OECD and our benchmark countries, we would find out that that's the case in other jurisdictions.”
Some lobbyists want a more powerful commission
Not all sectors of the business world want to see the commission’s powers curtailed.
HortNZ, which represents fruit and vegetable growers, was not confident the bill would result in stronger enforcement outcomes in practice, particularly in the grocery sector, which was dominated by two giant supermarket operators; Foodstuffs and Woolworths.
And DairyNZ was worried the bill did not go far enough in addressing competition issues arising in the digital economy.
Digital technologies and data-driven tools were now central to modern dairy farming, it said.
In the European Union and the United Kingdom, MPs were passing laws to ensure farmers were not trapped by “data monopolisation”, effectively being unable to shift supplier for fear of losing their data.
“International experience shows how competition can be distorted when farmers lose control of their data, when key datasets are siloed within commercial platforms, or when poor interoperability prevents switching and entrenches incumbent providers,” DairyNZ told MPs in a written submission.
“The risks associated with data monopolisation are well documented overseas and are beginning to appear in digital agriculture here.”
Who watches the watchers?
The bill proposes making changes to the governance of the commission to improve its decision-making integrity and strategic oversight, which lobbyists for business had pushed for.
The governance changes were applauded by BusinessNZ, and also by the New Zealand Initiative, which is a right-leaning economic think tank funded by big businesses including banks, law firms, power companies, insurers, Fonterra, and Woolworths.
However, the New Zealand Initiative pointed to the Financial Markets Authority as a regulator with a good governance structure, but which had deteriorated on measures that indicated it had not hired the right people.
The think tank reiterated its call for appointments to the commission, and other regulators and government agencies, to have higher skills requirements, to ensure they are properly qualified to do their jobs.
And, it is calling for all appointments to be vetted by an “independent appointment agency” that would be set up to do the job.
On Wednesday, The New Zealand Initiative separately published the Prescription for Prosperity report containing 235 suggestions which it said would result in the country becoming more prosperous.
In the report, it recommended removing the Commerce Commission’s compulsory information-gathering powers for market studies. Instead, the body should “focus exclusively on identifying regulatory barriers to entry”.
“The commission’s continued use of extensive information-gathering powers for economic research is a costly distraction from addressing actual barriers to competition,” the report claimed.