Treasury Laws Amendment (Fairer for Families and Farmers and Other Measures) Bill 2024

The majority voted in favour of a motion to read the bill for a second time in the House of Representatives. In other words, they voted to agree with the main idea of the bill. This means they can now discuss it in more detail.

What does this bill do?

In his second reading speech, Fenner MP Andrew Leigh (Labor) explained that:

When Labor came to office, we asked former competition minister Dr Craig Emerson, one of Australia's best policy brains, to review the Food and Grocery Code of Conduct. Dr Emerson consulted broadly, and concluded that the code was not doing its job. As he noted, there were no penalties, and no formal complaints had been raised after the 2021-22 financial year. His report made 11 recommendations, and the government accepted all of them. The most important recommendation was that the Food and Grocery Code be made mandatory, with substantial penalties for more harmful breaches.

As Dr Emerson noted, what it really means is that the supermarkets will need to treat their suppliers in good faith. They must not abuse their superior bargaining power, the muscle that they have over smaller suppliers.

The government's intention is that penalties will apply principally to corporations—that is, to supermarkets themselves. Consistent with other industry codes, the bill provides for non-body corporate penalties. Breaches by non-bodies corporate are lower to provide a proportionate approach.

The bill will ensure penalties for treating suppliers poorly in breach of the code are not merely a cost of doing business. These are serious penalties. They are the highest corporate penalties under any industry code.

The bill provides that the maximum penalty that can be prescribed in the code will be the greater of $10 million, three times the value of the benefit gained from the contravening conduct, or 10 per cent turnover in the preceding 12 months.