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

When Woolworths announced that their CEO, Brad Banducci, was heading to the self-check-out line, you might have missed the bigger story: the half-yearly profits. They came in at just under $1 billion. That's a 2.2 per cent increase from the same time the year before. What an absolute rort! Corporations in this country not only know how to take advantage of their customers; they also know how to take advantage of a media circus to bury the lead. CEOs come and go, but if we don't rein in these profiteering corporations then the pain that people are feeling will only get worse.

We've been told that people haven't eaten vegetables in two months. We've been told that people are skipping meals. We've been told that parents are surviving off the leftovers from the meals they can manage to scrape together for their kids. We've been told time and time again that the supermarkets and their record profits are to blame. What was the Prime Minister's response when asked if he will break up the supermarket duopoly so that everyone can afford to put food on the table? He said, 'We're not a command-and-control economy. We're not the old Soviet Union.'

I've got news for the Prime Minister: we do have a command-and-control economy, but it's corporations like Woolworths and Coles that are calling the shots, and Labor is taking their direction. Unless Labor has the guts to take them on, it's struggling families and everyday people that will continue to pay the price. No-one in this country should have to make the choice between paying the rent and paying for groceries—no-one.