Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I was saying before adjournment last night, this government is no friend of small business. We saw what they did through their industrial relations changes. We're seeing that they're not following through with their commitment in relation to reducing energy prices, which we know small businesses are hit with in an incredible way. They are unfit to govern this country, and they're demonstrating that time and time again. But, as I said last night, I am pleased in relation to the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Fair Go for Consumers and Small Business) Bill 2024 that the government are showing that they are listening to small businesses, albeit in a small way. I do welcome it nonetheless. Up until now, the government has shown that it has a deaf ear when it comes to listening to their concerns, and we need to see it step up to the plate and improve in this regard.

When I visit small businesses across Western Australia, in Perth and right across the regions—it's a big state, for anyone that hasn't noticed—as you engage with businesses, you see that the last thing they want to see is trade unions getting involved in their businesses, but unfortunately that's what this government is doing. Small businesses have been doing it tough under the Albanese government, and this government is no friend of small businesses. According to Trading Economics, small-business sentiment decreased 9.43 points in the fourth quarter of 2023 from minus 4.09 in the third quarter of 2023. With high energy prices, high inflation and other cost-of-living pressures, it's unsurprising that small businesses are doing it tough on the watch of this Labor government. We're supposed to be living in a country where, if you give opportunities for people to get ahead, to realise their aspirations in that process, they create opportunities for others, such as jobs and investments—opportunity for all. Thus, a good government would not stand in the way of Australians wanting to become small-business owners.

I have the privilege of representing Western Australia. I see that Senator Dean Smith is in the chamber with us. We're very proud of our state. We're probably the most parochial people in this parliament, us Western Australians. We will always stand up and fight for our state. It is the most beautiful state. The reality is that 97.1 per cent of businesses in Western Australia are small businesses—that's a huge percentage, isn't it?—and only 0.2 per cent are large businesses. We generate a big chunk of Australia's wealth. It comes out of Western Australia through the mining industry, but we are not just a mining state. It is of course a significant part of our economy, but we are not just a resources states.

We've got an engine room within the WA economy and that is our small businesses that are supplying across a whole range of sectors of the economy. It is the unsung heroes in the small business sector that we interact with each and every day, whether it's going to the coffee shop and getting a coffee on the way to work or engaging with a plumber or an electrician to do some maintenance on our homes. Whatever it is, we're engaging with small businesses each and every day. When we talk about these percentages, what this means is that for approximately every 11 Western Australians there is one small business. This is an incredible statistic that is often ignored not only by the Albanese Labor government but indeed also by the WA Cook Labor government.

Given the size of the recent budget surpluses that the Cook Labor government have been hoarding, the very least that they could be doing is providing greater cost-of-living assistance. The best way they can direct that is through small businesses. This includes raising the payroll tax threshold for small businesses—a policy that really should be explored by the Cook Labor government, because small businesses are dealing with the cost of living which impacts their employees and indeed their customers. I hate payroll tax. It's an insidious tax. It's an aspiration tax. It's a tax on employment. It's a tax on jobs, and it's a job-killing tax. Considering the payroll tax threshold in 2016 was $800,000, and today it's $1 million, they have done very little to provide tax relief for small businesses in my home state. Frankly the Cook Labor government have dropped the ball on payroll tax. and it's something they should look at.

When comparing the threshold with that in New South Wales, which has a payroll tax threshold of $1.2 million, the Cook Labor government has done little. Despite the massive budget surpluses afforded to it by the mining industry and the favourable GST distribution, which was made possible by the previous coalition government, small businesses in Western Australia deserve a fair go, but they're not getting that from wall-to-wall Labor governments. We've got to stand up for small businesses because, as I pointed out, they are the engine room and the lifeblood of our economy, including in my home state of Western Australia.

The coalition understands the small business sector. We get the importance of the sector, the value that it has and the valuable role it plays within the Australian economy. Small businesses create jobs, and they're good jobs that you can build a career on. The number of apprentices that small businesses employ means they do the heavy lifting when it comes to providing skills and opportunities to get ahead in your career, and we've got to get behind them. But when it comes to Labor governments—be it here in Canberra at the national level or in my home state with the Cook Labor government—all they do is wrap small businesses up in red tape and compliance issues that actually prevent them from getting ahead.

Under the previous coalition government, we delivered significant support for 3.7 million small and medium-sized businesses. This support included reducing the small business company tax rate, extending the instant asset write-off and establishing the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman. Importantly, this included providing dispute services in relation to retail lease disputes and recovery of unpaid invoices, just to name a few. The ombudsman, in particular, has been of great assistance for small-business operators. It is an avenue for small businesses to go to for assistance across the board, to get advice to be able to run their business. Businesses just want to get on with the job of running their business and not get caught up in all the issues that government seem to get in the way of. The ombudsman—a great coalition initiative—has enabled small businesses to get the support and advice that they need.

We will take a strong competition policy that delivers good consumer outcomes and boosts productivity in our economy to the election. Productivity continues to stagnate under this government's watch, and this government seems bereft of any new ideas on how to supercharge our labour productivity. Its legislative program to date has provided nothing to address productivity. Increasing productivity and curbing inflation will assist struggling Australian families to see real wage growth. There's no point having wage growth that doesn't match the economy and the inflationary impacts. We need wage growth that actually exceeds that. That's what real wage growth is. If you're just getting a salary increase but your grocery, energy and petrol bills—all of the things that you're paying out—are more than what you're getting, then you're going backwards. That's what Australians are experiencing. We have to see productivity growth. It is the only way we can deliver meaningful outcomes for Australians so that they feel the benefit of their labour and hard efforts. As recently as yesterday, 25 March, an article in the Financial Review again highlighted this battle, saying:

Wages now make up the lion's share of inflation due to unit labour cost growth the Reserve Bank of Australia described as 'very high' and productivity slumping to 2016 levels.

The need to boost productivity is critical in the short term to help the RBA bring inflation back to target.

Small businesses need cost-of-living relief too, yet this government is bereft of ideas that will actually get the economy moving and get productivity moving. We need actual skills, not just training for training's sake or training courses in pet projects. We need people to be engaged in training that leads to real jobs that exist so that they can be productive in the workplace.

State governments can do a lot more, by providing tax relief and payroll relief. The federal government can do more to incentivise the states to take action. We need competition policy that supports small-business owners and empowers consumers—not lobbyists, unions or big corporations.

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

The Greens will be supporting the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Fair Go for Consumers and Small Business) Bill 2024, which creates a new designated complaints function for consumer and small-business groups to raise complaints with the ACCC relating to systemic market issues. But anyone who thinks that the Albanese Labor government is actually taking on the major challenges in our economy, in our society and in regard to the Australian environment is absolutely kidding themselves.

One of the major problems that we are facing in our economy is a concentration of market power. That is the case across many sectors of the Australian economy, and it is the case in regard to the Australian economy as a whole. In general terms, Australia's economy lacks competition. What that does is to allow big corporations, many of whom pay absolutely no tax whatsoever in this country, to ruthlessly abuse their market power to profiteer and to price-gouge. Nowhere do we see that more clearly than in Australia's supermarket sector, although there are many other sectors, including the banking sector, where it is undoubtedly the case. Of course, what that means is that the big corporations make off with massive profits which benefit a small number of Australians, whilst a large number of Australians—the consumers of the products that these big corporations offer and the buyers of the products that these big corporations sell—are getting absolutely shafted. Who hasn't got to the checkout in a Coles or Woolworths store in the last year or two and been horrified at the increase in the cost of the basic fundamentals of life? All of us in this place are lucky that we can absorb those costs because we are very well paid, but millions of Australians are having to make really difficult decisions: Do they skip meals to feed their kids? Do they skip meals to pay the power bills? Do they eat two-minute noodles or a packet of corn chips in order to be able to afford a better meal in the future or to pay the school levies for their children? There is not enough competition in the Australian economy, and the big corporations mercilessly exploit that situation by price gouging their customers and raking in billion-dollar-plus profits in many cases.

At Senate estimates only a few shorts weeks ago I asked the Reserve Bank governor, Michele Bullock, whether she accepted the proposition that some corporations are using a lack of competition and the cover of high inflation to hike their prices above what would be required to meet increases in their input costs, and Ms Bullock accepted that proposition. In doing so, she joins a growing consensus amongst economists around the world, including the OECD, the IMF, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve in the US, luminaries such as former ACCC chair Allan Fels here in Australia, and the Australia Institute. There is a growing consensus among all those people and groups and many more that corporations are price gouging to boost their own profits in a cost-of-living crisis which is driving up inflation which triggers the Reserve Bank to increase interest rates, which then triggers a whole lot more cost-of-living pain for Australian mortgage holders and renters in particular.

Increased mark-ups and price gouging represent millions—and, in some cases, billions—more in profits for the massive corporations, while everyday Australians increasingly struggle to afford to pay for essential goods and services. And just so folks understand what we're talking about here, we're talking—amongst a range of other things—about food. To state the blindingly obvious, if you don't eat, you die, and there are millions of Australians who are either not eating enough or are not eating healthily enough to survive and, in many cases, to lead a dignified life.

Nowhere is the issue of lack of competition more stark than in the supermarket sector, where Coles and Woolworths combined have about two-thirds of the market share. That is a global outlier in terms of concentration of market power in the supermarket sector. That's why late last year the Greens initiated a Senate inquiry into supermarket pricing, and the evidence that we've received through this inquiry is clear. The supermarkets are not only ruthlessly using their market power to price-gouge shoppers but they are also ruthlessly using their market power to exploit their workers and to crush primary producers and farmers. We have a crisis on the land in Australia. Family farms are giving way to corporate farming. In many cases, children on family farms simply don't want to take the business on, because it is too hard to make ends meet because they don't have a sustainable business model because they are getting absolutely screwed down by Coles and Woolworths.

The supermarket duopoly rakes in billions of dollars in profits while our farmers are going to the wall, while their workers are being exploited and while shoppers can't afford to put three square meals on the table a day. Well, I can assure Australians of one thing, the Greens will always back people over corporations. We know that urgent action is needed, which is why we introduced our divestiture bill, to give courts and competition regulators the toolkit and the power they need to smash up the supermarket duopoly and other price-gouging corporations across the economy where they misuse their market power.

Now, the Prime Minister, in an astounding display of hubris and ignorance, has recently dismissed divestiture powers as Soviet-Union-style powers. But divestiture powers are not a controversial idea. The UK has this power; in fact, it was introduced by Margaret Thatcher. The US has this power and has used it regularly since the 1890s. The competition agencies of countries like Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands are right now or have recently required divestment in the supermarket sector using divestiture powers in order to increase local competition. The former head of the ACCC, Professor Allan Fels, has recently stated that Australia should introduce divestiture powers. The current head of the ACCC, Ms Cass-Gottlieb, has agreed that if divestiture powers were introduced in Australia they could increase competition in the supermarket sector, and, under economic analysis, she has agreed with the proposition that this would bring down the cost of food and groceries.

Mr Albanese needs to make a choice here and the Labor Party need to make a choice here. Are they going to back in the big supermarket corporations and the big banks, who are ruthlessly price-gouging their customers? Or are they going to back in ordinary Australians who are struggling to put food on the table? Is Mr Albanese going to keep dancing to the tune of the Business Council of Australia, which has come out strongly against divestiture powers? Of course they were going to back in Coles and Woolworths, because they are members of the Business Council of Australia. Or is Mr Albanese going to back in Australian shoppers who are getting price-gouged by Coles and Woolworths? This is a fork-in-the-road moment for the Labor Party and for Mr Albanese. Is he going to back in the big supermarket corporations who are raking in billions of dollars in profits while doing over their workers and screwing down farmers? Or will he back ordinary Australians—people who can't afford a feed, people who are skipping meals, people who work for Coles and Woolworths and the farmers who work so hard on the land to grow the produce that we all eat? This is a fork-in-the-road moment for the Australian Labor Party. And, mark my words, we'll give them the chance to vote for divestiture powers in due course in this Senate.

The supermarket duopoly are major donors to the Australian Labor Party. It is amazing and astounding how much money buys you in Australian politics, how many outcomes a relatively small amount of money can purchase you from parties like the Australian Labor Party. Well, it's time that Mr Albanese stopped letting the political donations of Coles and Woolworths drive Labor's policy on competition in Australia. It's time Mr Albanese stopped letting the political donations of Coles and Woolworths drive his opposition to divestiture laws in this country, which would allow for greater competition in the supermarket sector and lower food and grocery prices. It's time for Mr Albanese to take the side of the Australian people over the big corporations. It's time for him to prioritise the ordinary, everyday needs of people who are just scraping by to put food on the table over the billions of dollars in profits that are booked by Coles and Woolworths every year.

This bill, which we will support, tinkers around the edges. We need far more significant, far deeper and far broader competition powers in Australia. Of course, we need stronger merger laws in Australia, and I acknowledge that there is a process underway around merger law reform in this country. But let's be very clear about laws around mergers. They may prevent more concentration of market power from developing into the future—and I use the word 'may' because I'm not convinced at all that Labor is going to bring in a robust suite of amendments there, and in fact I predict that they won't and that they will instead tinker around the edges again as they're doing with this bill. But regardless of the scope and the significance of any outcomes from the consideration of merger laws that the government currently has underway, that will not provide a crucial tool in the toolkit to allow for the requirement of more competition in a particular sector, including supermarkets. That is the key problem that Mr Albanese and the Labor Party have.

It's time for divestiture powers in this country. They exist in most so-called free market economies around the world. They are a standard part of the toolkit of regulators in places like the UK, the US and many, many other European countries. The problem is that, if you don't have divestiture powers, the big corporations will continue to price gouge and continue to rake in billions of dollars in profits. You know who loses out? It is ordinary folks who can't afford to put food on the table. They are the people that miss out. The corporates make out like bandits, and the ordinary people get done over again.

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to extend my thanks to those senators who have contributed to this debate and to the members of the Senate Economics Legislation Committee for their consideration of the bill. The Competition and Consumer Amendment (Fair Go for Consumers and Small Business) Bill 2024 forms part of the government's better competition election commitment, which is designed to increase competition and ensure that the government is responsive to the needs of Australian consumers and small businesses.

The bill establishes a new designated complaints function within the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Designated complaints will be able to submit a complaint to the ACCC regarding a significant or systematic market issue affecting consumers or small businesses in Australia. The ACCC will be required to assess and respond to the complaint within 90 days, outlining what action, if any, they intend to take. The bill received broad support from consumer groups and other stakeholders as a mechanism to support greater competition and improved outcomes for consumers and small businesses. The Senate Economics Legislation Committee has endorsed the bill as a means of empowering consumers and small business advocates and recommends that the bill be passed.

Coalition senators recommended the government legislate for a postimplementation review of the scheme after a period of two years. The government is a strong believer in effective evaluation and is willing to back this commitment in legislation. The government-supported amendments provide for an independent review of the scheme as soon as practicable 24 months after the commencement of the bill, with the report to be tabled in parliament at the conclusion of the review. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.