Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This so-called crackdown on price gouging is a con. It will do nothing to stop price gouging, and it won't stop corporations using the cover of war to rip people off. It does not do what it says on the tin. This legislation increases penalties for companies caught lying about ripping you off, but it doesn't actually stop them from ripping you off, which it could do if the Greens' amendment passes. But let's see if that happens, because this government would rather just gaslight people about what it's doing and tinker around the edges than actually fix the problem. What is the point of stopping petrol companies lying about price gouging when you could simply stop them from price gouging in the first place? It is the ultimate window-dressing and will do nothing to fix the real pain that people are feeling.

The Greens want to make price gouging illegal right across the economy—no tinkering and no loopholes that corporations can exploit. Just ban it. Make it illegal. We drafted a bill to do that, and we brought it into this place. And who do you think voted against it? The Labor Party, the Liberal Party, the National Party and One Nation. All of these parties voted against stopping price gouging just two weeks ago. This bill is just trying to make the government look like they're doing something while they just continue to do absolutely nothing meaningful to stop price gouging. Australians are being slugged at the bowser thanks to a war that this government is backing and was the first in the world to back, and your response is to simply fiddle at the margins as usual. There are no provisions in Australian law that stop fuel companies price gouging, because you are not backing them. All this bill does is increase penalties for existing offences. Why are you misleading the public by implying that this bill does something that it does not do? People are hurting, and they need a government that is willing to stand up to big corporations, their obscene profiteering and their price gouging and actually offer real cost-of-living relief.

The price of fuel is the No. 1 topic on people's lips in the country right now, and it is the biggest domestic impact of an illegal war that your government has backed and that all of the war parties in this chamber have signed up to and continue to support. It is wreaking havoc not just in the Middle East—not just on civilians and school buildings. It is wreaking havoc on Australians in their everyday cost of living at the bowser. Ordinary people are paying the price of this war, and the big corporations are making bank. The gas corporations, the oil corporations, the billionaires and the weapons manufacturers are loving this conflict. It is making them richer, and it is making everybody else's life harder. It is your job to try to fix that. We could be taxing those big corporations, making them pay their fair share and using that revenue to help people. We could be taxing those export gas companies whose profits have already skyrocketed since this illegal war began weeks ago and using that money to help people. We could make public transport free, stop price gouging and actually invest in the things that make people live a good life and help them deal with the pressures that they're under. It might sound crazy, but, maybe on a bill that talks about price gouging, you should actually fix price gouging. That's precisely what our amendment will do.

The impacts of this war are not going to stop at petrol, though. We already know that fertiliser costs are going to go up, and that will flow through to both farmers and food prices. Under pressure from the Greens, three months ago the government finally brought in restrictions on price gouging by the big supermarkets, but do you think it's taken effect yet? No. They're making people wait six months before it takes effect, and they voted against making price gouging illegal across the economy. I wonder how much profit Coles and Woollies will make in the six-month reprieve that they've got to continue to profiteer off people, to continue to mislead people and to continue to rip people off. If this government actually wants to stop petrol companies from ripping people off, price gouging families and truckies for $3 or more a litre, then you could actually just stop price gouging, you could get us out of this illegal war, you could tax the big corporations and you could invest in helping people address the cost of living.