Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

Today marks an important step for Australian consumers. Starting today, 1 July, we are banning supermarket price gouging, with new laws coming into effect to protect everyday shoppers from excessive pricing practices and unfair behaviour in the supermarket sector. These reforms are about one thing: fairness. It's about fairness for families trying to make ends meet, fairness for pensioners watching every dollar and fairness for Australians, who should not be punished when they walk through the supermarket doors and when they're at the check-out. For too long, Australians have felt the impact of rising groceries, and we have to do everything that we can as a government to ensure that price rises are justified.

Families work very hard. They are budgeting carefully and they're making sacrifices. Yet, week after week, many Australians have found that their grocery bills just keep rising while the amount in their trolley stays the same. That frustration is real, especially here in Australia, where the two biggest supermarkets, Coles and Woolworths, control about 70 per cent of everything in the retail sector; that's 70 per cent when you add the other businesses that they own, such as the liquor stores, petrol stations et cetera. It would be a very powerful conglomerate if these two got together and basically discussed what the prices should be. That's why this government is really looking at this in a serious way.

It's felt in households right across Australia. Weekly grocery shopping is not a luxury; it's a necessity. It's one of the most basic expenses every family faces, so Australians should be able to trust that prices are fair and that companies are acting responsibly. When they are upping their prices, they should be justified, and that is why these reforms matter. They're part of a broad crackdown on anticompetitive behaviour across the food and grocery sector, in supermarkets, and they send a clear message that consumers must come first.

Importantly, price gouging is, as of today, as I said, now illegal. Businesses should be competing on service, quality and value, not exploiting circumstances to increase profits at the expense of hardworking Australians. This is an issue that I take particular interest in because it is something that every Australian experiences. I've raised the issue of the anticompetitiveness of the two big retailers in Australia many times over the years that I've been here. In the US they would have been divested and made to break up because, with the US laws, they would not be able to control over 70 per cent of the market. Unfortunately, here we can't do that, but we have put measures in place to make sure that gouging does not take place.

I'll give you an example. For years I've purchased a large tin of coffee that can usually cost around $22. It was, just after COVID, around $14. It's now around $22. Occasionally you'll walk into the supermarket and you'll see it for a couple of weeks at $32—maybe for three weeks or maybe even a month. Then all of a sudden you see 'special reduced price—$22'. All it means is, psychologically, they're ensuring that they are coaching us into buying things that are dearer, and it's just not on. I see it all the time. I keep an eye out for prices and I keep an eye out for their increases and their decreases—which are then sold back to us as specials when they were the normal price. These are unconscionable practices, and they should be stopped.

I notice when the so-called sale price looks remarkably similar to the original price. Another one is cracker biscuits. They were on special at, I think, two packets for $2—so $1 dollar each. They upped the price for a period of time to $4. They've dropped it down to about $3 something, on a special, even though a few weeks ago they were $2 for two packets.

As I said, we must crack down on these types of practices. The reality is that Australians work hard for their money, and we should be doing everything we can to protect them and to ensure that supermarkets are not price gouging and that, when they do, they are punished for it.

House adjourned at 20:01

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