Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We know that, currently, people are doing it tough out there, and we know that one of the hardest things that they face is prices at supermarkets. When you're on a very low wage or a pension, every single cent counts. Every time there's an increase at the supermarket, the person that feels it the most is that low-income earner or that pensioner. That's why I'm very pleased that the current government is doing all that it can to alleviate the cost-of-living problems. One of those areas is looking at the supermarkets and how they conduct themselves and how their way of selling is affecting supermarket prices. The government is going to provide $30 million in a package of additional funding for the ACCC to crack down on misleading pricing and practices and, very importantly, poor conduct from different outlets.

We need to do more in this area. We need to ensure that the Australian consumer is getting a fair go when they walk into the supermarket. During the ACCC inquiry, we saw examples all over TV where, for example, some of these big supermarket outlets—there are only two of them, really, the two that dominate the market here in Australia—would have specials and sales with bells and whistles, only to show that those sales and special prices were actually higher than the normal prices. That is absolute misconduct on behalf of supermarkets, conning the Australian public, and it's not on. This is where the ACCC has to crack down on them and ensure that they're doing the right thing by Australia.

We know that every piece of retail that's sold in this country, across the nation, is out of two outlets. When you include not just the supermarkets but the servos and liquor stores that are owned by these particular conglomerates, around 70 per cent of retail being sold in this nation comes from those two. In no other country around the world would they be allowed to operate. They would be broken down and sold off, and rightly so. It's unfortunate that we don't have laws in this country that will actually do that. In the United States, at over 40 per cent the government will step in and break you up and make you divest. The reality is that we've allowed these oligarchs to get away with it for so long.

I'm pleased that the government is now doing something. There's going to be a crackdown from the ACCC to investigate the allegations to ensure that the Australian consumer is getting a fair go, especially in an economic climate like the current economic climate, where every cent counts, especially for those low-income workers, for our pensioners and for people that are doing it really tough. These reforms will make the system faster, stronger, simpler and more targeted and more transparent. It's also about more competition for consumers and more certainty and clarity for businesses. Under this new system, we'll set clear thresholds to determine whether a merger needs ACCC approval, and there are also powers to ensure all the high-risk mergers are looked at.

We know that currently, when you look at the price increases and what's been happening, a survey of 2,500 households in July 2024 showed that Australian households spend around $168 per week on groceries. This equates to almost $728 per month or $8,700 per year. The average weekly spending for larger households of five or more people is roughly $232, with the majority of this spent on staple or everyday food items. When we talk about staple and everyday food items, these are necessities. This isn't a luxury; this is about putting food on the table for your kids and your family and ensuring that you have the nutrition that's needed. So we need to ensure that there's a price monitoring that would look at prices continuously and that, where we see something that perhaps doesn't seem quite right, the ACCC has the power to go in, investigate and take action to ensure that we're able to keep prices down and to ensure that there's fair competition and that these big companies are doing the right thing by the consumer. The biggest increase in prices of food items recorded was for oil and fats, which were up 50 per cent over the last few years. Fruit and vegetables were up over 30 per cent. (Time expired)

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