Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Gallagher) to a question without notice I asked today relating to the economy.

Nowhere is the consolidation of market power in Australia more evident than in the banking sector and in our supermarket aisles. The big four banks are on a shopping spree. They've gobbled up St George, Bankwest and the Bank of Melbourne, and they're not stopping there; they have Suncorp in their sights. In our supermarket sector, Coles and Woolworths have turned it into a duopoly, pushing out or swallowing up most of the competition.

This consolidation is not just about market share; it's about ruthlessly using market dominance to inflate margins well beyond what we see in similar but more competitive markets overseas. Take a hard look at earnings and recent prices and margins revealed in the supermarket sector. Coles clocked in an operating profit of $1.7 billion on sales of $19.7 billion in just six months. That is a margin of 8.7 per cent. Woolworths had an even higher margin, of 9.6 per cent, with an operating profit of $2.5 billion from $25.6 billion in sales. To put these figures, particularly the margins, in perspective, Sainsbury's in the UK runs at a margin of just over six per cent. Remember: for Coles it's 8.7 per cent and for Woolworths it's 9.6 per cent. What does that tell us? It tells us that the two supermarket giants in Australia are utilising their outsized market power to price-gouge, and Australians are paying the price.

Would the minister accept the proposition today that corporations are price gouging in Australia? No, she wouldn't. And yet, in failing to do that, she is ignoring the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, who has acknowledged that corporations in areas of low competition are in fact using the cover of inflation and low competition as an excuse to increase prices more than they need to.

But it's not just the Governor of the RBA who agrees that corporations are profiteering. We have the OECD, we have the IMF, we have the European Central Bank, we have the Bank of England, we have the Federal Reserve in the United States, we've got the former chair of the ACCC Mr Fels and we have the Australia Institute economists all telling us that corporations are engaged in price gouging. Yet, somehow, a government living in fantasy land is refusing to accept that proposition.

The Labor and Liberal parties are making all the right noises about the supermarket duopoly being out of control. They pull all the right faces when they're talking about it. But here is the problem, folks: both of the major parties, the Coles and Woolworths of Australian politics, pocket political donations from Coles and Woolworths—the very supermarkets that are engaged in price gouging to the extent that Australians are skipping meals to be able to afford food. If Labor and the coalition are genuinely keen on taking on Coles and Woolworths, and joining the Greens to take on the giant supermarket corporations, then here's a thought: you can start by giving back those political donations. Show the Australian people where your loyalties lie. Are you with them, the Australians who are skipping meals to be able to afford to put food on the table for the rest of the week? Or are you in bed with the supermarket corporations at the top end of town, turning a blind eye while they squeeze every last cent they can out of their shoppers?

The Greens are calling on Labor and the Liberals to put their money where their mouths are and return the political donations they get from Coles and Woolworths and, in doing so, take a stand against corporate greed, take a stand against profiteering and take a stand against price gouging. Show the Australian people you're serious about standing up and tackling the duopoly, who ruthlessly use their market dominance to do over farmers, their workers and their shoppers, instead of acting as their parliamentary lickspittles, which is what you've been doing up until now. We need more than lip service from the Labor and Liberal parties; we need accountability and we need people in this place who are willing to stand up to the corporate giants. In the Australian Greens, you've found just such people.

Question agreed to.