Matters of Urgency — Supermarkets

Helen Polley

Senator McKim has submitted a proposal, under standing order 75, today, which is shown at item 13 on today's Order of Business:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Government to step in to break up the Coles and Woolworths duopoly and provide cost-of-living relief for Australians by rolling out publicly owned supermarkets.

Is consideration of the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

David Shoebridge

At the request of Senator McKim, I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Government to step in to break up the Coles and Woolworths duopoly and provide cost-of-living relief for Australians by rolling out publicly owned supermarkets.

If ever there was an idea whose time has come, it's this. Woolies and Coles made a combined $2.2 billion in profits last year, gouging hundreds of dollars from every family in this country in pure profit to the shareholders of Coles and Woolies, much of it going overseas to private equity firms who are making bank, literally. This duopoly is making bank while so many Australians are struggling just to put food on their table. It won't come as a surprise to anyone who's been out talking, but 79 per cent of Australians found it harder to put food on the table last year, and more than one in three reported that they'd been skipping meals or eating less due to the cost of groceries. People are pushing their trolley down the aisle and then, when they're heading up to the checkout, it's like they're pushing a boulder up a hill with the anxiety: will you be able to afford food for your family—food for yourself and food for your kids? The same basket of groceries at Woolworths has gone up by 8.5 per cent in just the last 16 months, and, at the same time as these prices are going up, people's pay cheques under Labor have just flatlined. They haven't moved since 2011. They are back to where they were in 2011. These numbers are shameful.

And the big supermarkets want us to think that they're struggling with inflation. Fuel prices, cost of living—'It's tough for Coles and Woolies too, you know, and that's why you're paying more.' But Australians don't buy that rubbish. We know that the likes of Coles and Woolies are profiteering, taking the money when they can, because they've got the power in the market. They dominate the market and they squeeze out other competitors. Don't let them compete on price to keep their profits up. And Australians feel that in the price of essentials, the price of food. And what does the government do? All we get from Labor are reasons for doing nothing. 'Oh, no, we couldn't possibly afford to build something. Oh, no, we haven't got the competence to do that. Oh, no, we can't.' They'll probably roll out sovereign risk or some other kind of do-nothing excuse.

And you know what? Australians don't buy that either. They have to buy overpriced groceries, but they don't buy that rubbish coming from this government. Eighty-eight per cent of voters say the federal government could do a lot more to reduce the price of food and groceries, and they're right. Government could do something, not wring its hands and say: 'Oh, isn't it bad that our mate Donald Trump started a war and increased the fuel prices? Oh, isn't it sad that it's getting so expensive?' They don't want you wringing your hands. They want government to help. People are right to be fed up with government saying it's too hard to make the bold action. We need to actually start making life better for people. Millions of Australians are struggling to put food on the table, and they want a government to be part of the solution, not one that's just protecting the profits of Coles and Woolies.

Here's an idea: Australians should have a publicly owned supermarket chain that makes food cheaper and puts pressure on the big chains to stop the profiteering. Mayor Mamdani is doing that in New York, right? When he rolled it out, the corporations there and all these political opponents said, 'Oh, this is terrible. This is terrible,' but you know what? New Yorkers love it. They love the idea of cheaper groceries. They like the idea of taking the profit out and not feeding the profit of some corporate when they're just trying to feed their families. Better things are possible. Labor, the Liberals, One Nation—they're all taking the dime from big corporations, taking the private planes, taking the big donations, taking the fossil fuel donations to run their campaigns. Do you know the party that doesn't? It's the Greens.

If Australians are struggling to put food on the table, Coles and Woolies should not be posting billion-dollar profits. It's time to break up the duopoly. It's time to act for Australia. (Time expired)

Ross Cadell

It's interesting that, every time we don't agree with the Greens on something, it's because we're on the take of the corporations or something like that, forgetting the fact that the Greens held the record for some time with the largest corporate donation in Australian history. That was from the Wotif corporation. But let's just go away from that. Maybe we don't support something because it's a stupid idea, and I think this is a stupid idea. All marks and no originality here, we mentioned Mayor Mamdani and what he's doing in New York, but it's been tried in Australia. If you go back to 1915-1916 in Queensland, Queensland thought, 'We'll go out there and we'll buy a whole lot of supermarkets, but we won't stop with that. We'll spend half a billion pounds'—

Helen Polley

Senators—

Senators, Order! Please resume your seat. This is a Greens motion. We need to maintain our order. Senator Cadell, please continue.

Ross Cadell

'And, not only that, we'll get the supply chains. We'll go and we'll buy some farms and we'll get some transport and we'll do this.' The only problem was it lost money. So you might not be paying more in the shops, but you're paying more overall in your taxes. You're paying more overall.

One thing I do know—and I was on the supermarket inquiry, Senator McKim, and I know these guys aren't good guys. When you can have a company like Lidl spend half a billion dollars knowing that they don't want to compete in Australian markets, you know that it's a tough gig out there. And you think the Australian government can compete any more with these guys when the scale is there, when the logistics are there? You won't be delivering things cheaper unless you subsidise, which means higher taxes. Someone always pays. That is the problem with this. That's why increasing competition in the sector is better. That's why I stood and supported the motion for divestiture in this place—because greater competition is required in supermarkets. With less power, a lesser number of stores and less crowding out—and it's not through their contracts on their purchases; it's through their property dealings. It is when they sit on blocks of land for 20 or 30 years to crowd out the little guys, because these big supermarkets can. That is the problem. It is a market failing to maintain competition in the market.

An Australian government supermarket will not work. When you're going into retail—when you're going into markets—if the answer is government then the question is bloody stupid. We've found that so many times in this space.

David Pocock

Except in health and education.

Ross Cadell

I hear the interjection about health and education. Where there is market failure, I agree. But the supermarkets that are out there have too many outlets. They have these sorts of things. You have people like IGA and you have the Metcashes of the world out there, trying to have a go. But the answer is more competition and less government control so they can have a crack—getting these things there. The answer to getting supermarkets in more competition is simply that: restrict the outflow and restrict the market size.

That's why I go back to having supported Senator McKim's very good motion for an inquiry on divestiture from supermarkets. It was unpopular for votes over on that side, but it had to be done. But this is a cut-and-paste socialist playbook. It is nothing more than that. It is nothing less than that. People in this country do best when they are not bound by unfair rules and unfair guidelines, and the economy does better when it can be all it can be. In the supermarket space, there are some adverse things, but government cannot do it cheaper than the big guys. When a corporation that actually specialises in grocery diversification in Europe comes here and says, 'We can't compete,' that is a problem. These people think a government body—when we see how long it takes this government, or any government, to do anything—can go out and compete in a free market. That is wrong.

The motive is good: more power, more buying and a lower cost of living for people. I get where they're coming from. They're coming from a good place of giving people more groceries for their buck, but that is in the hands of the government. It is in the hands of inflation. It is in the hands of government spending. It is in the hands of all these things we've raised. If people want to be able to afford more, we have to become a wealthier nation, and we don't become a wealthier nation through socialism; we do it through embracing markets, employing people and lifting everyone up. We don't cut different slices of the pie; we build a bigger pie so everyone eats more. Unfortunately, some rich people will get richer. I accept that. But everyone will be better off, and we will build an efficient safety net. That is where we're going. That's what we should do.

They go out there and talk about Mamdani supermarkets. People might love them. They aren't making money. They aren't doing the right thing yet. You always pay, whether it's through taxes or whether it's through subsidies, just because you go in there. There were many ways we looked at people helping out. People were dumpster diving when we went to Tasmania and toured. We can do food banks. We can do all sorts of things to help those people doing it tough, probably at a cost less than what we would lose by operating supermarkets. The objectives of this are good. The process is wrong. Let's help people who need it, not flush millions of taxpayers' money on supermarkets.

Long debate text truncated.