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

My question is to the Prime Minister. The Greens-led inquiry into supermarkets said price gouging should be illegal and obscene profiteering should stop, but all Labor has done today is make Coles and Woolies agree to a code they were prepared to sign up to anyway. Prime Minister, how much cheaper will groceries now be? Or is Labor just tinkering around the edges again with a code, that will be good for farmers but do nothing for consumers, instead of just making price gouging illegal?

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Melbourne might not be interested in a fairer go for farmers and families, but we are on this side of the House. And the difference between the member for Melbourne and this government—

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

The Treasurer will pause. The member for Barker will assist the chamber by leaving.

The member for Barker then left the chamber.

The Treasurer, in continuation.

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Melbourne's main job is to issue angry press releases about the action that the government is taking to get a fair go for farmers and families and to make sure that we're making what was a voluntary code mandatory, dramatically increasing the penalties and providing bigger and better avenues for people to make complaints and have those resolved. I would have thought, even in a world where the Greens political party wants the Labor government to go further than we have, at the very least the Greens would welcome the progress that has been made. If they were fair dinkum, they would. If they were fair dinkum about what's happening in the supermarket sector, they would welcome these important steps. And they wouldn't stop there; they would also welcome the fact that we've empowered the ACCC to play a much more active role in this sector. They'd also welcome the fact that we've funded the consumer group Choice to provide the kind of price transparency that we need in the market. They'd also provide support for our efforts to strengthen and streamline the mergers regime in our economy. But the Greens political party are not fair dinkum about these issues, and that's because they always prioritise having a barney with the Labor Party over doing the right thing by consumers. And that's what we're seeing here, and we see that question in this light.