The Green Institute, the Australian Greens’ think tank, has put forward a $25.1 billion plan for a publicly owned supermarket chain, built in part from stores forcibly acquired from Coles and Woolworths.
Under the proposal, released on Tuesday, the government would acquire 200 supermarkets and three distribution centres from the two chains and run them as “Fair Go Grocers”. It would then build 424 more stores and 10 more distribution centres. The institute has costed the whole program at $25.1 billion over five years.
Its executive director, former Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather, says the chain would drive down what Australians pay for groceries. David Shoebridge, the new Greens leader, has welcomed the idea.
The plan comes from a think tank. It is not Greens policy and it is not law.
What the Plan Proposes
The ABC reported that the stores would sell groceries at about cost and that the chain would be cost neutral to the budget after its first five years. The Guardian reported that the network would pay for itself once the initial outlay was made.
Mr Chandler-Mather said the target was about 20 per cent of the grocery market.
He set the cost against defence spending. “For half the cost of a single AUKUS submarine we could establish a national network of publicly owned supermarkets that would save families thousands of dollars on their groceries,” he told the ABC. Buzzline reported on the Trump administration’s review of AUKUS in June last year.
He made a second comparison when speaking to the Guardian: “Just like healthcare and education, food is essential to life. And just like Medicare and public schools, it’s time we had a public option for food.”
What It Claims to Save
The two outlets carried different savings figures.
According to the ABC, the institute says essentials could be 30 per cent cheaper at the public stores, and grocery bills could be cut by hundreds of dollars a month.
Mr Chandler-Mather told the Guardian the saving would be up to 22 per cent on the average shop, or $60 a week for a four-person household.
The institute commissioned a YouGov poll of 1,500 voters. In it, 94 per cent rated food and grocery bills as a concern, the ABC reported. When the same poll asked whether Australia should try publicly owned supermarkets, 84 per cent supported the idea, according to the Guardian.
An Idea From New York
The proposal follows a plan by New York mayor Zohran Mamdani to open five city-owned grocery stores, and both the ABC and the Guardian reported the connection. The Guardian’s headline called it a “Mamdani-style” plan.
Where Coles and Woolworths Stand
The institute’s own analysis, reported by the ABC, says Coles’s supermarket earnings before tax have grown 58 per cent since 2019, and Woolworths’s have grown 41 per cent.
In the latest financial year, Coles posted a net profit of $1.09 billion and Woolworths posted $1.14 billion, the ABC reported.
Last year a report by the competition watchdog found the two chains had little incentive to compete on price. The report stopped short of calling their profits excessive, and it did not find that the pair formed a duopoly.
No response from Coles or Woolworths was reported in coverage of the proposal.
Last term, the Greens and the Coalition backed divestiture powers that would allow the supermarkets to be broken up. Labor opposed them, the ABC reported.
A Pitch, Not a Policy
Mr Shoebridge pointed to what voters were asking of politicians. “People want politics to be putting solutions on the table, not just saying it’s all too hard,” he told the ABC.
“A publicly owned supermarket with cheaper food is wildly popular, because it makes people’s lives better,” he told the Guardian.
Mr Shoebridge has welcomed the proposal, but it belongs to the Green Institute. The party has not adopted it as policy, and none of it is law.
Sources: ABC News, “Public supermarkets could slash food bills by quarter, Greens think tank says”, 6 October 2026 (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-06/green-institute-proposal-public-supermarkets-break-duopoly/107228700); Guardian Australia, “Max Chandler-Mather pitches Mamdani-style $25bn plan to nationalise 200 Coles and Woolworths supermarkets”, 6 October 2026 (https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/oct/06/greens-pitch-zohran-mamdani-style-251bn-plan-to-nationalise-200-coles-and-woolworths-supermarkets)
Photo: Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Cucumbers on display at Queen Victoria Market, Melbourne, photographed in 2019. This photograph is illustrative; it was not taken at a supermarket and is not connected to the proposal.
