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

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

There have been 15 inquiries in this place, so it's not as if I'm standing up about something that this place is not conscious of. There have been 15 inquiries in 30 years. There were two inquiries going at the same time two months ago! Every time the issue is raised, we have an inquiry. To quote the great Winston Churchill, if you simply must do it and you cannot do it, then of course you must have an inquiry. The wider the terms of the inquiry, the less likely it is to hit a target, he also said. So we have inquiry after inquiry because you haven't got the courage to do what needs to be done. It may embarrass a lot of people in this place to say that Kevin Rudd left this place with three vitally important things done: the NDIS, the NBN and the national energy grid. He did it. He had a huge fight with the mining companies, but he didn't back off. I disagreed with him on that, but he didn't back off.

We haven't seen that moral courage in this place very much at all. We're giving you the opportunity here, with this bill, to do something about—you come in here and you talk about affordability. Here are two companies—they had 50.1 percent of the market in 1991. It grew to 68 or 72 per cent, depending on which series you want to refer to—let's just say 70 per cent—in the space of 10 years. It has grown 20 per cent, two per cent a year. We can assume from that that we're at over 80 per cent now—over 85 per cent now. Have we done anything about it? No. We just keep having inquiries.

We are moving a bill here, and I'll bet everyone on the crossbench votes for it. But the people that are on the gravy train getting the handouts from Woolworths and Coles—they won't be voting for it. We know that the shoppies union is why these blokes are dogging it, and we know you blokes are dogging it, but I haven't got time to go into that at this point in time.

Let us take the humble potato. It's the most elementary of foods. Here we go. The price paid to the famer was—

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

Order. I'd like to remind the member for Kennedy that it's protocol in this place that we don't use props. I ask him to please put the prop down.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second this excellent bill, and I would add that the government must do something about grocery prices because it is simply unconscionable that Woolworths and Coles rake it in while Australians go hungry or are struggling so hard to pay for a roof over their head or to put fuel in their vehicle. I'm sure we all understand that increased competition means decreased prices, but Coles and Woolworths constitute a whopping 65 per cent of Australia's grocery market, and there is little reason for them to drop their prices—and it shows, with Coles reporting $1.1 billion in profit between 2022 and 2023, while Woolworths posted a thumping $1.62 billion profit on an operating margin of six per cent. This is nearly double the margin enjoyed by some supermarkets in the more competitive UK market. No wonder the price of food in Australia is far too high and getting higher.

But don't just take it from me, because the numbers speak for themselves. For instance, the ABS noted that the price of food and non-alcoholic beverages rose 4.4 per cent in the 12 months to January, which is well above the average monthly CPI, which rose just 3.4 per cent. According to Foodbank's hunger report, 3.7 million households experienced food insecurity just last year, 10 per cent more than in 2022. Nor does the pain extend only to households, seeing as how a Senate committee inquiry into supermarket prices heard in Hobart earlier this month that some fruit and vegetable growers haven't received a price increase from supermarkets in 15 years. How farmers can be left to suffer in this way while Coles and Woolworths grow their profits is just beyond me.

Yet, as much as this feels like a crime, Coles and Woolworths can get away with it largely because of ineffective competition regulation and enforcement mechanisms. Indeed, as former chair of the ACCC Rod Sims put it, the Food and Grocery Code of Conduct is 'deeply deficient' because it's voluntary and there are no penalties for breaching it. The result? Supermarkets can and do keep holding their suppliers to ransom. Yes, the announcement by the government of an ACCC inquiry into supermarket pricing practices is welcome, but what we really need is a body that can identify and stamp out wrongdoing without having to wait for the government's say-so.

Now, it would be unfair to discuss grocery prices without acknowledging other price pressures, like COVID; natural disasters, including bushfires and floods; and, of course, international conflicts. But that is no excuse for us to let the supermarkets off the hook while Australians continue to resort to dumpster diving and skipping meals. No, we must instead legislate reform to the grocery market immediately, including by establishing regulation and accountability mechanisms which encourage competition and fairness.

This is why I rise to second the member for Kennedy's bill, which would reduce the market share of any supermarket to no more than 20 per cent, via enforced and progressive divestiture over five years. This may sound like a drastic measure, but the fact is that this bill was first introduced 10 years ago, and 10 years later the problem still has not been fixed. In fact, the situation is even worse, demonstrating clearly that governments, indeed this parliament, must stop tinkering around the edges and instead make bold changes to the supermarket sector. To do anything less makes a mockery of all the handwringing over the cost of living and the importance of the public interest.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Kennedy in the last few seconds remaining on this?

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

He said it was my bill. He did a lot of work on the bill, if not the majority of the work on the bill.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.