Supermarket prices
Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (17:48): (796) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Consumer Affairs, and the action that I seek is for Labor to ensure shoppers can be certain they are not buying price-gouged items. You might have noticed a few extra sales tickets or yellow price stickers at the supermarket recently. Well, amidst all the public pressure and the scrutiny from parliamentary inquiries and the like, the supermarkets Coles and Woolies have announced that they have started actually lowering their prices, albeit temporarily – funny that. Now, we all welcome, I am sure, a lower bill at the check-out, but these announced deals, these price discounts, are temporary. Coles and Woolies will hope that it is enough to quell public unrest, and then they are just going to jack the prices up again. Not to mention that sometimes the sales tickets are not even discounted at all – they will be the same price or something different.
Shoppers have no way of knowing if we are getting a fair deal. We do not know the mark-up on these prices, or how much the farmers and suppliers are actually getting paid for their products. What we do know is that people are completely at the mercy of the supermarket duopoly, Coles and Woolworths, and their price gouging when it comes to being able to afford food. They set the prices, and they can do whatever they want with something that really should be an essential service. Shoppers would not be in the dark about if they were getting a good deal, and shoppers would not have to go hungry if the Labor government would just treat food as an essential service and stop buck-passing the responsibility solely onto the federal Parliament. It is your responsibility; get on with it.