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

I rise to take note of the final report of the Senate Select Committee on Supermarket Prices. I want to start by thanking all my colleagues on this select committee, and I note that Senator Cadell is in the chamber as well. I want to say to my colleagues on the Select Committee on Supermarket Prices that it was a committee that worked really hard. It worked in a very collegial way, in the main, and as the chair I can say that all senators who participated in that committee participated in good faith and added significant value to the work that the committee did and to the final report of the committee.

The Greens initiated this inquiry here in the Senate because we listened to the millions of Australians who've experienced skyrocketing food and grocery prices over the last few years. Of course, that's coming on top of a cost-of-existence crisis in this country. Wherever you look these days, whether it's food and grocery prices, rents, mortgages, power bills, transport costs—they are spiking, and millions of Australians are genuinely struggling just to exist in our society and in the communities in which they choose to live.

This inquiry heard heart-rending stories of single mums skipping meals so they could put enough food on the table for their kids and of people having to dumpster dive to be able to keep their nutrition levels up. Make no mistake: the evidence that we heard was heart-rending and it was real. It was real evidence given to our committee by real people. We initiated this inquiry because we had a very strong view that the supermarket corporations—each of whom, Coles and Woolworths, are raking in annual profits of over a billion dollars—are doing over their consumers and also doing over their suppliers, who, in the main, are farmers and folks on the land in this country.

I've thanked all my colleagues, but I want to make sure that I thank the secretariat for the outstanding support they provided to us.

The evidence that was provided to the inquiry was clear. Coles and Woolworths together have nearly a two-thirds share of the supermarket sector, which is a sector that is significantly more concentrated than in comparable international jurisdictions. As a result of their market power, Coles and Woolworths are able to hike prices for their consumers, and they're also able to suppress prices for their suppliers. In doing so, they have both raked in billion-dollar profits in the previous 12 months, and their CEOs are making multiple millions of dollars in salaries.

Experts to the inquiry agreed that, to bring down the cost of food and groceries, we need to rein in the market power of supermarket corporations—that is, we need greater competition in the supermarket sector. That is why the inquiry recommended making price gouging illegal and introducing divestiture powers to break up the supermarket duopoly. These are not radical or controversial reforms. They already exist in many comparable so-called free market economies around the world. The US and the UK, for example, have had divestiture powers for decades, and the European Union has banned price gouging. Both of these recommendations are backed by leading competition experts, including former ACCC chair Professor Allan Fels.

Now, since the opposition, the Liberals and the Nationals, have announced that they do support divestiture powers in the supermarket sector, there is one mob standing in between Australian shoppers and cheaper food and grocery prices, and that is the Australian Labor Party. There is one mob in here who stand hand in hand with Coles and Woolworths, supporting their billion-dollar profits, hand in hand with their CEOs and their multimillion-dollar salary packages, and that is the Australian Labor Party. There is only one mob that is saying to Australian shoppers, 'We don't understand your pain, and, even if we did pretend to understand your pain, we're not going to do anything about it,' and that is the Australian Labor Party. The numbers are here now, off the back of this inquiry, to have divestiture powers in the supermarket sector. It is only Labor who's standing in the way of that reform.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.