Nicola's supermarket smash-up is not serious. 

She's playing a very risky political game and she knows it. 

Cost of living is the only game in town this election. 

Win on the cost-of-living battle, and you win the war. 

Nicola thinks by looking tough on supermarkets, she'll earn the respect of the 'squeezed middle'. 

But, as I've said many times before, even if you wipe out ALL the so-called 'super profits' the supermarkets are making, you benefit by a few extra dollars per week. 

But there's a big if here.

Our supermarkets are run very efficiently. Yes, they are dominant, too dominant, but that allows economies of scale in a long, thin country of five million people. 

Mess with that for political gain and you risk prices actually going up, not down. 

That is not my view. That is the view of the very report which Nicola relied on to make her grand pronouncement yesterday. 

In other words, this whole thing could end up costing us more than it saves us. 

Nobody knows for sure. No governments in the world have gone in with an axe and split up a live supermarket chain, in real time.

The very threat of it will put the willies up investors. Who's going to be investing in New Zealand's supermarket industry before the second half of 2027?

That's how long a second report will take to answer those questions. 

And guess what, those risks, those 'scenarios', those best guesses on calculators by modellers will still be there in 12 months' time. 

At which point, National will shelve this idea. It won't happen. 

This isn't happening. It's not serious. It's politics. It's election year. 

Some are saying this is Nicola's Jacinda nuclear-free, oil and gas moment. 

But it's not. Jacinda actually did the ban. Nicola's not. 

Jacinda fired the gun, Nicola's just waving it around the supermarket for a photo-op.