Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is putting the weekly grocery bill and Te Tiriti o Waitangi at the centre of the Greens’ Election 2026 pitch, backing an extraordinary intervention in the supermarket sector while promising Māori that rangatiratanga and genuine Crown partnership will remain core priorities for the party.
The Greens have unveiled KiwiMart, a proposed publicly owned supermarket chain designed to challenge the dominance of Foodstuffs and Woolworths and force greater competition into a grocery market that has frustrated successive governments.
Under the Affordable Kai policy, at least 120 existing supermarket stores and capacity from two distribution centres would be acquired and transferred into public ownership. KiwiMart would operate commercially but with an explicit mandate to prioritise affordable groceries.
For Davidson, however, the policy sits inside a much broader argument about who the economy should serve.
The Greens are campaigning on affordable living, stronger public services and redistribution of economic power while simultaneously promising to put Te Tiriti, rangatiratanga and Māori decision-making closer to the centre of government.
KiwiMart takes aim at the supermarket giants
The scale of the supermarket proposal is significant.
Parliamentary Library modelling obtained by the Greens estimates acquiring 120 stores and two distribution centres would cost around $1.3 billion.
A further $1.5 billion would be used to capitalise KiwiMart so it could operate as a viable national competitor.
That puts the supermarket component alone at about $2.8 billion, while the Greens’ wider Affordable Kai programme — including school lunches and food-security initiatives — would push spending beyond $6 billion over four years.
The Greens argue the fundamental problem is no longer a shortage of supermarkets but a shortage of genuine competition.
Their solution is direct government intervention.
Rather than waiting for another international supermarket chain to enter New Zealand, the state would become the third major player.
It would be one of the most dramatic restructurings of the grocery sector in decades.
For whānau, this is about what is left in the wallet
Davidson is connecting the policy directly to food insecurity and the pressure confronting families.
The Greens say around one in five children live in households that run out of food, arguing that supermarket competition cannot be separated from child poverty, household incomes and the cost-of-living crisis.
For many whānau Māori, those pressures are experienced every time they walk into a supermarket.
When kai costs more, there is less available for rent, power, petrol, school costs and healthcare.
That is why the Greens are pitching Affordable Kai as considerably more than a competition policy.
It is being presented as an intervention in household poverty.
$150 million a year for community food security
KiwiMart is only one part of the package.
The Greens are promising a $150 million annual Fair Food Fund supporting community-led food-security initiatives.
They would also double the cap on Work and Income food grants, strengthen food-bank and regional food-distribution support and develop a National Food Strategy.
The party wants a legislative right to adequate and nutritious food.
That community focus could be particularly significant for Māori organisations.
Across the motu, marae, Māori health and social-service organisations and community providers already operate at the frontline of food insecurity.
A substantial community-controlled fund potentially shifts some responsibility and resources away from Wellington and closer to organisations working directly with whānau.
School lunches return to centre stage
Davidson has also made school food a major part of her election campaign.
The Affordable Kai package would restore and permanently fund Ka Ora, Ka Ako and expand the programme to another 150,000 children.
It builds on the position Davidson has previously outlined to Radio Waatea, where she linked school lunches with child wellbeing, household pressure and supporting local providers and employment.
For the Greens, feeding children at school is therefore being framed simultaneously as education policy, health policy, poverty reduction and local economic development.
That argument could resonate strongly in communities where schools and kura see the consequences of household hardship every day.
Price gouging also in the firing line
The supermarkets would face another major change under a Green government.
The party wants excessive pricing prohibited and proposes extending that approach beyond groceries into concentrated markets such as energy and fuel.
The Commerce Commission would receive greater funding, stronger powers and tougher penalties.
A mandatory supermarket pricing-accuracy code would also be introduced, including automatic compensation when customers are overcharged.
It adds up to an election platform in which the Greens are explicitly arguing that government should be prepared to intervene when concentrated private markets fail to deliver adequate competition.
Critics will inevitably question the cost, commercial risk and extent of state involvement.
The Greens’ answer will ultimately have to be demonstrated at the checkout: whether their intervention could genuinely deliver cheaper groceries.
Then there is Te Tiriti
But Davidson’s political pitch to Māori extends well beyond kai.
The Green Party’s 2026 manifesto describes its goal as an Aotearoa that honours Te Tiriti o Waitangi, where power and wealth sit more strongly with communities.
Its Te Tiriti platform calls for governing structures that uphold the rangatiratanga of iwi and hapū and for genuine partnership between tangata whenua and the Crown.
That places the Greens firmly on one side of what has become one of Election 2026’s major ideological dividing lines.
While the current Government has moved to change or remove Treaty references across legislation, the Greens are campaigning for Te Tiriti to have a stronger role in the future direction of the country.
For Davidson, those positions are connected rather than separate.
Economic justice for Māori cannot simply mean reducing the grocery bill while leaving questions of power, whenua, decision-making and rangatiratanga untouched.
Marae are part of the Green vision
The Greens have already translated some of that approach into specific election policy.
Their Te Waonui a Tāne policy proposes greater certainty and resources for marae, presenting marae as critical community infrastructure and places of resilience, identity and self-determination.
The party has also committed to giving effect to Te Tiriti in conservation law and prioritising Indigenous-led stewardship of whenua.
Those commitments reinforce the wider message Davidson is taking into the campaign.
Te Tiriti, in the Green Party’s proposition, is not intended to sit in a separate Māori policy chapter.
It is supposed to influence economic, environmental and social decision-making.
A significant Māori presence inside the Greens
The party is also attempting to demonstrate that commitment through its candidates.
The Greens announced 13 Māori candidates on its final 2026 party list, with nine placed inside the top 20, and Davidson ranked number one.
That could become particularly important in an election where Māori voters are being presented with increasingly complicated choices across electorate and party votes.
The Greens will be competing not only against parties on the political right, but also with Labour, Te Pāti Māori and other parties seeking Māori support.
For Davidson, that means demonstrating what specifically a stronger Green presence in Parliament would deliver for whānau.
An election about who holds economic power
There is a common thread between KiwiMart and the Greens’ Te Tiriti agenda.
Both challenge existing concentrations of power.
In the supermarket sector, the Greens argue too much power sits with two dominant commercial groups.
In their Māori policy, they argue too much decision-making power has historically sat with the Crown rather than being shared with iwi, hapū and Māori communities.
The solutions are obviously very different, but the political philosophy connecting them is clear: shift power and resources closer to people and communities.
That is the proposition Davidson and co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick are taking into Election 2026 under the party’s wider campaign priorities of affordable living, healthy nature and honest government.
The checkout could become an election battleground
For all the constitutional and economic arguments, however, KiwiMart will eventually face a brutally simple political test.
Can it make groceries cheaper?
A publicly owned supermarket would require billions of dollars of public capital.
Transferring stores out of existing supermarket groups would provoke fierce debate about competition, property rights and government intervention.
And establishing a successful nationwide grocery business would be a major commercial undertaking.
Those are legitimate questions the Greens will have to answer.
But Davidson’s counterargument is likely to be equally straightforward.
For families struggling to fill the trolley every week, the status quo is already expensive.
And after years of inquiries, market studies and attempts to encourage competition, the Greens have decided incremental change is no longer enough.
For Māori voters, the Green proposition now brings two significant issues together.
Put more kai on the table — and put more rangatiratanga at the decision-making table.
Whether that combination translates into votes will be one of the important Māori political stories to watch as Aotearoa heads towards Election 2026.
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