Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I support the call on the government to insist that the ACCC formally and immediately investigate what is happening with the milk wars that are being driven by the big supermarkets and their implications more broadly. I also want to draw attention to the Senate Economics Committee inquiry into the impacts of supermarket price decisions on the dairy industry. This inquiry into the ongoing milk price war is underway, but I seek to draw the attention of this chamber and of those who are listening to the inquiry that we really need to have—that is, whether the toolkit available to the ACCC is adequate, whether it best supports the public policy and economic objectives we have for our country and how well those tools are actually being utilised.

That very inquiry, an independent inquiry, is what the coalition offered the electorate prior to the last election. We were confronted—affronted might be a better way of describing it—by the then Minister for Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs, Dr Emerson, saying, ‘No, no, no. The competition laws in Australia are just fine. There is no scope to improve them. There is no opportunity to recognise changing market conditions. Everything the ACCC needs, it already has.’ That did not last very long at all, because shortly after the election, when we were highlighting—

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