Publicly owned supermarkets?! Um, reality check in aisle seven please

October 11, 2026 — 5:00am

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Money may be the root of all evil, but the alternative is far worse.

This week The Green Institute, the new think tank headed up by former Greens firebrand Max Chandler-Mather, proposed “publicly owned supermarkets” that would, he says, save families thousands of dollars in groceries.

Having spent my childhood school holidays on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, with my grandparents in East Germany, I remember publicly owned supermarkets well. Shortages were an everyday fact of life. The joke goes that a man walks into a shop and asks the assistant if they don’t have any meat. The assistant scowls. “No comrade. This is the shop that doesn’t have any fish. The shop that doesn’t have any meat is across the road.” The less funny reality was that the shelves were often empty or the produce spoiled. The profit motive may be distasteful to some, but its output is quality and plenty.

The moral valence of money – of profit – is the fundamental ongoing philosophical debate of our times. As the terms “left” and “right” become increasingly meaningless, it is the dispute over money that increasingly defines the political divide.

For me, this realisation arrived late – only quite recently. At the end of one of those enjoyable conversational debates you’ll be familiar with, if you have friends who see the world differently. It became apparent after we’d challenged each other pleasantly for a while that this was the key point on which we........

© The Age