Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

Coles and Woolworths have been making billions in profits by price gouging in a cost-of-living crisis. For far too long, the big supermarkets have taken advantage of the grossly excessive market power they've been allowed to accumulate under successive Labor and Liberal governments. This has allowed them to dictate prices and to set terms, raking in billions in excess profits at the expense of suppliers and consumers.

The Greens established the Senate Select Committee on Supermarket Prices because, unlike Labor, we are absolutely focused on bringing food and grocery prices down. The committee heard from people about skipping meals, dumpster diving and eating unhealthy foods just to get by. It heard from farmers who are being screwed over, in some cases being paid what they were 15 years ago. The message was clear: Coles and Woolworths have exploited their massive, unchallenged market power to profiteer at the expense of the health and wellbeing of millions of Australians.

The committee has recommended that price gouging be made illegal, which would mean that corporations could no longer arbitrarily increase prices without facing consequences from the courts. The committee has also recommended divestiture powers for the supermarket sector, which would give the Federal Court the power to break up corporations when they abuse their market power or act unconscionably. Without the ability to break up the duopoly, our market will remain skewed toward the interests of a few powerful players, and nothing will change.

A responsible government would not allow the accumulation of massive corporate profits to take precedence over the interests of the Australian people, but, as Australians now understand, this is not a responsible government. A responsible government would not brag about banking a $9 billion surplus while three million Australians, including one in six children, live in poverty in this country. A responsible government would not tinker around the edges of the welfare system while income support and pension payments are below the poverty line, ignoring the recommendations of its own committee. A responsible government wouldn't be wasting nearly $400 billion on submarines while public schools and the public health system teeter on the brink. And a responsible government wouldn't spend $30 billion a year on handouts to property speculators while public housing supply dwindles and millions of people continue to remain in housing stress. A responsible government wouldn't be giving CEOs, billionaires and politicians a $4,500-a-year tax cut while 52,000 women facing domestic violence are turned away from legal services every year. If Labor really was a responsible government, it would stop supermarket corporations ruthlessly using their market power to gouge prices while raking in billions of dollars in profits.

There is a Greens bill in the parliament right now which would create divestiture powers and sap these rapacious corporations of their unchecked power. The only thing standing in the way of that bill is the Labor Party.

Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Greens set up a Senate inquiry into supermarkets to get some concrete steps to stop supermarkets' record profits while so many are living and struggling through a cost-of-living crisis. To quote directly from the inquiry:

The inquiry received overwhelming evidence that everyday Australians are increasingly struggling to afford to buy food as the price of groceries have skyrocketed in the last few years.

The government needs to break up Coles and Woolworths. These massive corporations are squeezing us for every dollar that they can get and acting in simply unconscionable ways on a mission to make profits while people are crunching numbers and trying to survive in the middle of this cost-of-living crisis. In Western Australia, people are having to choose between rent and food.

It has gotten this bad because both the Liberal Party and the Labor Party have taken donations from these corporations and then allowed these same corporations to do whatever they like when it comes to pricing the very food that we need to survive. It is a perverse and unjust system. The cost is measured in the hunger that grows in our communities and in parents having to choose to skip meals to make sure that their kids have fresh food for their lunch boxes at school. We need to talk very clearly about the fact that both sides of politics, for decades, have allowed the shareholders, the billionaires, and the owners and managers of these corporations to aggressively and parasitically monopolise the food creation and distribution market in this country.

Farmers have suffered, as they have been squeezed terribly, trying to make ends meet. There is a mental health crisis among farming communities because entire farms are going to the bank and are being sold off because you can't make money if Coles and Woolworths won't pay for what you are producing. The distributors are driven out of business because the corporate competitors that are backed up and owned by Coles and Woolworths are able to bid for the job far lower than it costs to do it to drive their competitors out of business. The small distributors and retailers trying to actually provide fresh nutritious food to their communities are driven out. They can't get any retail space, because, if they go into a space and try to sell some food, Coles and Woolies are already in there and they've scored a deal to be the only one selling food to that community.

It results in parents, in students, in disabled people and in people across communities not being able to eat. They're working from 11 o'clock one night through to eight o'clock the next morning, and, when they come home and look at a frozen lasagne in the fridge as the only thing that's there, they wonder: 'What is the point of going to work the next day? What is the point of everything I just did if I can't even put fresh food in the fridge?'

Now we need this parliament to take this issue seriously. We need this government to take this issue seriously. If the government wants to actually join with the Greens and the community in taking action right now, if they want to put their money where their mouth is as they wring their hands this evening and trot out their lines about the cost-of-living crisis that so many people are experiencing in this country, then they should get on board with the Greens' bill to give the government the power to break these corporations up and to introduce actual competition into the system. You should actually work with the Greens to drive the corporate donations out of this place that have so successfully bound the hands and gagged the mouths of so many ministers and politicians in this place. And, while you're at it, clamp down on these unfair trading practices. It is not okay that these two companies run this system in this way. It does not meet the expectations of the Australian people. Join us, the Greens, in doing something about it—in actually ensuring that fresh, nutritious food can be delivered to Australian communities. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.