Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. It is critical that this parliament and politicians take action today, because right now there will be people going to the checkout at Coles and Woolies and putting items aside because they can't afford them. There will be people skipping meals because rent has soared on average $100 and mortgages about $200 a week under this Labor government. They are now putting items back onto the shelf and skipping meals because they can't afford to do everything, because we are in a cost-of-living crisis. This is happening at the same time as these supermarkets, Coles and Woolies, are raking in billions of dollars of profits, and they're price gouging.

As the consumer organisation Choice has made very clear, when you go to Coles or Woolies, there's almost no difference in price at the end of the day. But, in many places around this country, that's the only choice that you've got. And we've got one of the most concentrated supermarket sectors in the world, which means these massive corporations have huge amounts of power to set the price wherever they want and to price gouge. In the face of that, the government could do something.

The government could take on these big corporations, make price gouging illegal, and say, 'Enough of your profiteering in a cost-of-living crisis; we are going to back people.' But, instead, the government comes up today with an announcement that effectively says they're going to back Coles and Woolies. All the government will do is ask Coles and Woolies to sign up to a code they've already agreed to sign up to. Meanwhile, under Labor, price gouging remains perfect legal. Coles and Woolies can make billions of dollars of profit, and it is perfectly legal.

People are getting sick of governments making press statements and announcements that on the surface appear to be tackling the cost-of-living problems. But then, when you actually look at it, you realise they do nothing to tackle the systemic crises that we're facing. People are sick of these bandaid answers to real structural crises that we are facing. People are sick of seeing Labor tinker around the edges when they know that, when they turn up next week, even after this code has been implemented, the prices will still be exactly the same.

The Greens put the price gouging of the supermarkets and their profiteering onto the agenda, and the Greens-led Senate inquiry said that there are a number of things that we need to do. This was one of them, but you've got to do the other things as well. Otherwise, the supermarkets will keep price gouging. You have to do what other countries around the world have done, which is to say to Coles, Woolies and the big supermarkets, 'If you keep abusing people and abusing your market power, we're going to break you up.' It's time to break up the big supermarkets, stop their price gouging and make price gouging illegal. But, to do that, you need to put some teeth into our laws—not make the supermarkets sign up to a code of conduct they've already agreed to sign up to anyway.

At the end of the day, this place has a choice. The politicians in government need to decide: are they going to back the public interest, or are they going to back vested interests and corporate interests? The Prime Minister and those in government are all too happy to get their photos taken standing next to these big supermarket chains, use them for photo ops, have them at their fundraisers and take donations. But, when asked to make price gouging or profiteering illegal, they won't do it. Labor is letting Coles and Woolies continue price gouging and make massive profits. Labor does not tax them fairly.

As a result, people are suffering. If Labor think that their announcement today to do something that the supermarkets had already agreed to do anyway is going to satisfy people who are struggling to make their groceries add up—at the same time as paying their mortgage or rent or thinking about how they're going to put braces on their kids, because Labor won't put dental into Medicare—then they've got another think coming. People know the system is broken at the moment. It is certainly working for the supermarkets. It's certainly working for Coles. The system is working for Coles. The system is working for Woolies. The system is working for Labor, for Liberals, for politicians, but it is not working for the people. This place needs to make price gouging illegal. We need to stop the profiteering and we need to do it today.

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