Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Can the Treasurer outline the steps the government is undertaking to improve competition? What other approaches have been proposed?

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

I thank the member for Lalor for her question but also on behalf of the 95,000 taxpayers in her local community that will be getting a tax cut because of her efforts and the efforts of this Albanese Labor government.

This government is taking action on a number of fronts to make our economy more competitive. Here I shout-out the assistant minister for competition for the work that we do to that end. We're strengthening the Food and Grocery Code of Conduct to make it mandatory to get a fair go for farmers and families. We commissioned the consumer group CHOICE and funded them so that people can find and follow cheaper prices at the checkout. We're strengthening our merger approval system. We've increased the penalties for anti-competitive conduct, and we've banned unfair contract terms as well. We've empowered the ACCC when it comes to supermarket prices because we want to make our supermarkets as competitive as they can be so that people can get the best prices possible.

The opposition today made another chaotic announcement. There are always two common features when those opposite make an announcement. Step 1, roll the shadow Treasurer. Tick! Step 2, not be able to answer the most basic question about the most basic details of the policy. We saw the shadow Treasurer rolled on nuclear and public subsidies. We saw him rolled on tax cuts just last week. And we saw him rolled again today when it comes to divestiture powers in the supermarket sector. But, in fairness to the shadow Treasurer, he's not the only one rolled today. On Peter Stefanovic's show, not that long ago, Senator Hume said:

Well, there's always concern with divestiture powers whether they will actually decrease prices.

That's from the shadow minister for finance. This is the usual half baked announcement that's been rushed out to try and cover up the last half baked announcement, which was the nuclear reactors that they don't have a cost for. Once again, we're seeing that here today.

If those opposite really cared about supermarkets or competition or inflation, they would have asked us about it today. The announcement was only made just before question time, and they couldn't even get around to asking about it. That's because they are hopelessly divided on this question. The shadow Treasurer has been rolled. The shadow finance minister has been rolled. The Leader of the National Party has got his way over the wishes of so many others on that front bench.

Obviously, the food and grocery code, when it looked at this matter, said that the risk was that it could actually make things worse, not better. It found that forced divestiture resulted in a supermarket selling some of its stores to another large incumbent or enforced closure of stores, and we might see less competition, not more competition. Because of that, the food and grocery code review didn't see it as a credible threat. Previous competition reviews all the way back to 1993 and 2015 didn't recommended it. This is the usual half baked idea to cover up the last half baked idea.