Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Hansard source

The mark-up here, Woolworths' mark-up, is $4.50. The farmer got paid between 40c and 50c. He got paid 45c and they charged $4.50. That's an 800 per cent mark-up on a humble potato. And you blokes have done nothing about it. They know nothing about it. But, do you know, over a third of the people are now voting for us. Do you know why they're voting for us? Because we're moving legislation to do something about it. That's why. We might have a lot of diverse views, but at least we have the courage to act.

Don't think these people don't come at you. When I did the last aggressive attempt here, there was $2½ million spent in the Kennedy electorate to get rid of me, and the head of Coles devoted a third of his speech to the national business council to attacking me personally. So don't think that it's not without a price when you stand up to the big boys. Don't think it's without a price.

We delineated five items. We just went down to the store, because we haven't got the huge resources of the major parties or the government. We went down and picked up potatoes, milk, sugar, eggs and bananas—things every person will eat every three or four days. We got the prices for those things, and then we found out what the farmer was paid for those things. We came up with the figure of a 195 per cent average mark-up.

When they had only 50.1 per cent of the market share, the two of them, they had only a 108 per cent mark-up. Disgraceful! I'm going to wrap up now and hand over to my worthy colleague. If we got a brilliant answer to what we put on here, we got a reduction of 400 items in price.

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