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

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This of course is the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Make Price Gouging Illegal) Bill 2024. Folks in the chamber and, I'm sure, many people around the country will remember the Select Committee on Supermarket Prices that the Greens established in the last parliament. It was a committee that put the supermarket corporations, and in particular the CEOs of those corporations, on the rack and held them to account for their rampant price gouging. In particular, Coles and Woolworths, the duopoly in the supermarket sector, together enjoy a market concentration of about two-thirds of the entire supermarket sector in this country—a concentration, I might add, that far exceeds any other similar jurisdiction around the world, whether it's the UK, whether it's the US, whether it's European countries, whether it's New Zealand. Australia has the most concentrated supermarket sector in the world. Thanks to the pressure that committee brought to bear—I acknowledge Senator Cadell in the chamber today, who was a very constructive member of that committee. It reminds me of Mr Joyce's quote; the way to make things happen in this place is when people in Akubras and people in koala suits get together. That committee recommended a range of things, including divestiture law reform but also making price gouging illegal.

I spoke about the supermarket duopoly, but of course there is a political duopoly in this place: the Labor and Liberal parties. Together they resisted the Greens' attempts to make price gouging illegal right across the economy. In fact, I very clearly remember when Labor voted this bill down—this very same bill—in the previous parliament. So, out of the goodness of our hearts, we are now bringing this bill back on to give Labor another opportunity to do the right thing.

Under pressure from the Greens, the Prime Minister got up in the early days of the election campaign last year and committed Labor to making price gouging illegal in the supermarket sector. I'll say a couple of things about that. Firstly, it shows that pressure from the Greens works. It shows that, when we go to work, when we raise an issue and explain clearly how people are being hurt by what is going on—in this case, supermarket price gouging—we can put enough pressure on Labor to force them to act. That's exactly what Labor did. They've now come in and introduced regulations that make price gouging unlawful in the supermarket sector. Those regulations will kick off on 1 July, and the Greens will be scrutinising those regulations very closely—both ahead of 1 July, during the disallowance period, and post 1 July if those regulations stand—to make sure they do what it says on the tin.

The simple fact is price gouging should be illegal not just in the supermarket sector but right across the economy. Whether it's the big banks, big energy companies or big insurance companies, when you have a concentration of market power in particular sectors of the economy, big corporations should not be able to exploit that market power to price gouge their customers. It makes no sense at all to make price gouging illegal just in the supermarket sector when you've got the big banks, the airlines, the insurance companies and the energy companies also misusing their market power to price gouge ordinary Australians. Millions of Australians are getting smashed everywhere they look now, whether it's at the supermarket check-out, whether it's their medical bills, their power bills, their school bills or their transport costs or, importantly, given the interest rate rise this week, whether it's their mortgages or their rents.

We saw the performative hand-wringing from the Treasurer and the Prime Minister this week after the RBA put up interest rates, pretending that there was nothing they could do about it. They blamed it all on the RBA—'the RBA is independent; there's nothing the government can do'— when, in fact, the government has plenty of levers it can pull to take inflationary pressure out of our economy and reduce the pressure on the RBA to put up interest rates.

I mean, you wouldn't think that Labor could have turbocharged an already out-of-control housing crisis after coming to office, but that's exactly what Labor has done. There's their ongoing support for the mindbogglingly generous capital gains tax discount. Over half of the benefit goes to the one per cent wealthiest people in this country. It overwhelmingly favours older Australians; young Australians get next to no benefit out of it. Of course, that pump primes demand in the housing sector and puts houses more out of reach for renters who're trying to buy their first home. There's Labor's five per cent deposit scheme, which every economist in the country warned them would put house prices up. And look what happened—it did! The combination of those two things is worsening the housing crisis and driving the great Australian dream of owning your own home further out of reach for millions of Australian renters and young people.

The other thing Labor could do to rein in inflation and ease the pressure on the RBA to act is to make price gouging illegal. At Senate estimates in 2024, the Greens questioned Ms Bullock, the governor of the Reserve Bank, and she conceded that some corporations are using the cover of inflation and the lack of competition to hike prices higher than any increase in their input costs. That is a textbook definition of price gouging.

Of course, when big corporations with market power jack up prices simply because they can—because Labor won't stop them from doing it—that drives inflation higher, it drives costs for ordinary Australians higher and it puts pressure on the RBA to lift interest rates, which then applies more financial pressure on millions of Australians through their mortgages and through their rents.

Do you know who cheers the loudest when the RBA puts up interest rates? That's right: it's the big banking corporations, because there is a direct correlation between interest rate rises and increased profits for the big banks. While millions of Australians are now struggling with higher mortgages and millions more Australians will struggle with higher rents as a result of the increase in interest rates, the big banks are laughing all the way to the bank. While Australians are suffering deepening financial stress, the supermarkets, the airlines, the insurance companies, the banks and the telcos put up their prices and report ever-growing profits. In the last financial year, Qantas reported an 18 per cent increase in profit. Australia's largest insurer, the Insurance Australia Group, reported a staggering 30 per cent increase in their profits. Australia's big four banks booked an eye-watering $31.5 billion profit between them last financial year.

Since Labor came to government in 2022, the cost of essentials across the economy has skyrocketed. Insurance has jumped by 38 per cent since Labor came into government. Essential food products, like bread, cereal and milk, are up by 20 per cent. When the Treasurer and the Prime Minister brush off any responsibility whatsoever for rate hikes, what they fail to tell Australians is that they have the capacity to bring inflation down, which would lower the likelihood of rate rises. They could start to exercise that power right here, today, by supporting this bill to reduce corporate price gouging. This needs to be done across the whole economy, not just in the supermarket sector.

After voting down the Greens bill to make price gouging illegal during the last parliament, Labor capitulated during the election campaign and announced that they would make corporate price gouging illegal in the supermarket sector. Their capitulation on this issue is proof that Labor could act if it made the political choice to do so. But of course Labor rakes in political donations from many of the big corporations, who would not be able to price gouge if this Greens bill were successful.

The other proof point in Labor's delivery of price gouging reform in the supermarket sector is that it shows that the Greens campaign against the capital gains tax discount actually is starting to bite and that Labor does feel political pressure. When you point out the egregious unfairness of the capital gains tax, in terms of both economic inequality and intergenerational inequality, it is an absolute no-brainer for reform. If the Treasurer is looking for budget repair, I offer him capital gains tax discount reform. If the Treasurer wants to deliver for working Australians, as he said he would after his economic roundtable, the Greens offer him capital gains tax discount reform. If the Treasurer wants to deliver on intergenerational equity, as he said he did after his economic roundtable, the Greens offer him capital gains tax reform. The great thing about capital gains tax reform is that, because it overwhelmingly benefits such a small number of Australians—the ultra-wealthy of this country—you can actually pluck the largest number of feathers with the smallest amount of squawking. It is a political no-brainer, it's a budget no-brainer and, most importantly, it is a no-brainer in terms of fairness. It is a no-brainer to address soaring wealth inequality in this country and it's a no-brainer to make sure that young people get a fair crack not just at owning their own home but in getting ahead and having a dignified life. Going to work for a living is turning into the worst way to get ahead in this country.

If you go to work every day and you're on the average wage, you pay more tax in a year than someone who makes the same amount of money flipping investment properties. That is how cooked our economic system is. That's how biased our tax system is against working people. Then you've got a Labor government, a party that was formed to look after the interests of working people, who lock in behind this eye-wateringly unfair tax provision where well over half of the benefit goes to the top one per cent, the wealthiest people in the country, and people under 35 get well under 10 per cent of the benefit. It overwhelmingly favours older Australians, and younger Australians keep getting shafted—as they are by climate change, as they are by biodiversity collapse and as they are by the housing crisis. And now Labor is locking in behind this unfair provision in the tax code.

In relation to making price gouging illegal across the economy, renowned experts, including former ACCC chair Professor Alan Fels, have recommended making it an offence to charge excessive prices. Professor Fels, I note, did not recommend that that provision be limited to only a single sector. The Greens bill is based on Professor Fels's recommendation and the support of a range of economists right across the political spectrum. It's based on the EU model, which is working to keep prices down in the EU and stop corporations from price gouging. It is possible to take on corporate Australia. It's possible to make price gouging illegal. The numbers are there in both houses of this parliament. The only thing stopping us is the Labor Party. (Time expired)