Fatima Payman (WA, Australia's Voice) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to be able to speak to the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Make Price Gouging Illegal) Bill 2024 this morning, and I rise to show my support for this bill. Australians know that when they go down to a supermarket, to the shops, the deck is stacked against them. Billion-dollar corporations have the market in a vice grip. They choke their suppliers and underpay farmers. You would think that these companies just sell food, but no: they actually engineer spending. From the moment you step into a store—with the way they lay out the aisles, the music they play and the smell of fresh bread pumping through the store—they are conditioning you and nudging you to buy more.

They're getting inside your head and pushing you to buy more and to accept the prices that they have asked you to pay without even challenging it. The 2025 ACCC report on supermarket prices found that Australia has 'an oligopolistic market structure in which Coles and Woolworths have limited incentive to compete vigorously with each other on price'. The report goes on to say that, over the past five financial years, margins have increased for Coles, Woolworths and ALDI, meaning that at least some of the grocery price hikes that Australians are having to pay for are translating directly into very high profits for these giants.

And it doesn't stop at prices. The ACCC's interim report found that 165 blocks of land, largely owned by Coles and Woolies, have been left undeveloped, some for many years. This practice, known as 'land banking', prevents competitors from opening new supermarkets and keeps competition out of local communities. In WA—particularly in Maylands, which is within the member for Perth's electorate—Coles has held onto a vacant lot for 18 years. This is causing huge frustration for Western Australians who look at the empty land while driving down Guildford Road. Not only is it an eyesore; it is prime land that could be used for housing less than five kilometres from the Perth CBD. When you pose the question to Coles and Woolies, these two giants, about this, they just blame local councils and development rules for the delay and the lack of progress. But the effect is clear: fewer choices means less competition and means higher prices, and it's ordinary Australians carrying the burden of the rising cost-of-living pressures.

Before the last election, as Senator McKim mentioned earlier, Labor did promise to ban price gouging in supermarkets. At the October estimates, the minister said:

… the government's commitment, in response to substantial community concern, was to develop legislation by the end of this year.

By 'this year', he meant 2025. Yet this deadline came and went, and no such bill was brought before this parliament. That tells Australians exactly how much urgency the government has attached to this issue. Instead, we're given regulations—and this is a very long one—called the Competition and Consumer (Industry Codes—Food and Grocery) Amendment (Supermarkets Excessive Pricing Prohibition) Regulations 2025. It's quite the mouthful. These regulations were made without parliamentary scrutiny, and they won't even come into effect until July. A political duopoly that is regulating a supermarket duopoly is what we're seeing before us. These rules effectively hand the price gouging problem to the courts at a time when Australians need the government to stand beside them at the checkout.

The regulations raise serious concerns. For example, how will the government accurately measure the true cost of supply for Coles and Woolworths? Supply chains are complex and we know they're constantly changing. But, without clarity, how do the government and the ACCC keep track of these changes so that price gouging can be distinguished from supply instability?

Compared to the government's regulations, an element of this bill that recommends itself is that it does not believe, as the government apparently does, that the scourge of price gouging has quarantined itself within this country's supermarkets. We've seen it particularly in insurance, mortgages and electricity—prices just never seem to go down. We need to address price gouging no matter what happens and no matter where it happens.

Earlier this week, I moved OPD No. 317 relating to the excessive pricing regime, and I hope that, in the coming weeks, we finally get some clear answers about how the government intends to deal with this because this is a question that is circulating around dinner tables. People are having to make those really tough decisions: Do we pay rent? Do we buy less groceries? Where do we go to get our groceries? They're counting every single cent because, with the interest rate hikes, every dollar counts. Every cent counts. The reality is that the Reserve Bank has signalled another wave of inflation, if not two. As interest rates continue rising, everyday Australians will pay more for the basic essentials of life. Yet, time and time again, the supermarket duopoly just seems to walk away unscathed. We're seeing this pattern not just now; it's been happening for a while. Regular Australians carry the burden while the duopoly profits from their pain. It's not fair, and it's not how the economy should work.

I implore all my colleagues in this chamber to support this bill because our constituents—Australians out there who have placed the responsibility on us to make the sensible decisions—expect us to be hearing and listening to them. They expect us to ease their pain, to address issues like this rather than put them off or wait for the government to come to the table. This is a very sensible bill, and I commend the Greens and Senator McKim for bringing it forward.