Garth Hamilton (Groom, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. The coalition is standing up for small businesses, farmers and consumers by ensuring stronger penalties for anticompetitive behaviour in our supermarket sector, including divestiture powers for the worst misconduct. These actions are in line with comments made earlier this year by the chair of the ACCC, Gina Cass-Gottlieb, who said that divestiture powers would be 'useful to have in the toolkit'. When will the Prime Minister show leadership and join the coalition in supporting a fairer deal for families and farmers at the check-out?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Groom very much for the opportunity to have a second crack at this issue. There are 70,000 of the member for Groom's constituents who will benefit as a result of the tax cut on Monday. I hope that the member for Groom has told them that they oppose it, and I hope as well that he goes out there and spruiks this divestiture policy that was not so much announced but slipped out by the Leader of the Opposition yesterday. He did a stand-up before question time, then came in here and didn't ask a single question about it, and nor has he today. But the member for Groom will never say no to an opportunity. The fact is that this is a model that will lead to higher prices. I'm not sure who they think will buy a Woolworths or a Coles if they're forced to sell in a local community—except each other. That is why it is such an impractical plan.

I said before that it has been quite a journey for the Liberal Party of Menzies, to go from trying to ban the Communist Party to trying to implement state ownership of both supermarkets and our energy sector. You can imagine how they'll go during the election campaign. 'Seize the means of production,' they'll be out there saying. 'Seize the means of electricity production.' When it comes to energy and nuclear reactors, 'Socialism in our half-lifetime' will be the slogan that they have. At the next election, it won't so much be a three-year plan; it'll be a five-year plan—because the National Party have completely taken over the agenda over there, as the minister for energy has said.

There is no credible argument for this policy. It began as an economic policy from the Greens political party. Those opposite were in government for a decade and never did it. They wouldn't even mandate the voluntary code of conduct. So they've gone, in just two years, from having a voluntary code written by the supermarkets themselves to, potentially, nationalising those supermarkets—and, in between times, the seamless segue that occurred prior to Australia Day of the Leader of the Opposition wanting Woolies boycotted over what thongs they sold.