Newsroom
Competition is consumer’s friend, government is not: Katter
June 21, 2024
Competition is the consumer’s friend – that’s the sentiment welcomed by the Federal Government after consumer group CHOICE handed down its first supermarket grocery comparison report this week.
“But then why is the government not enforcing this ‘competition’ it’s happily welcoming,” Katter’s Australian Party MP Bob Katter asks.
CHOICE chief executive Ashley de Silva said in a three-way comparison between Coles, Woolworths and Aldi the latter came in at about 25 per cent cheaper of a basket of 14 items.
Mr de Silva said the report, commissioned by the Federal Government to address grocery prices, indicated Competition is the consumer’s friend,” and the Federal Competition Minister Andrew Leigh has since welcomed the findings. [1]
“So, when my crossbench colleagues and I introduced legislation to increase supermarket competition, by way of divestiture, why did the government ignore our calls?
“Here we have the government welcoming ‘competition’, yet when I put forward my Reducing Supermarket Dominance Bill in March, it was shot down.
“A bill which would have both reduced the market share of the major grocers down to 20 per cent, increasing competition, and also levelled out the difference between what the farmers are paid and what consumers pay for the same produce with a 100 per cent maximum mark-up element.”
Speaking on the government’s decision to commission a report as a measure to tackle cost of living and rising grocery prices, Mr Katter said the move was not even worthy of laughing at.
“We had 15 inquiries into supermarkets over 30 years – nothing came of them. There’s been four this year, with two running at the same time.
“It’s report after report after report, and what did one of these reports find – that we now need quarterly comparison reports to help us decide where to shop.
“Do these people just not get it. Try telling that to a family who is deciding which items to put back on the shelf – ‘oh it’ll get better, we’ve got our quarterly report coming out on it’.”