Families in our community are paying more for the same groceries they’ve always bought. We need real supermarket competition and stronger consumer protections to ease the cost of living crisis.
The cost of living crisis is hitting Australians hard—nowhere more so than at the checkout. Families in our community are paying more for the same groceries they’ve always bought, forcing many to make tough decisions about what gets left out of the trolley.
It’s not just supply chain costs; it’s a lack of competition. Coles and Woolworths control more than 70% of supermarket sales—one of the highest market concentrations in the world. This means:
- They set prices for both suppliers and consumers, with little room for competition.
- They squeeze farmers and suppliers, forcing them into unfair contracts.
- They control where new stores open, keeping competitors out.
- They make it hard for customers to understand what’s on sale and what’s not—is that really on sale, or is that tag just there to make me feel like I’ve got a good deal?
And we only need to look at the data to know how it’s playing out:
- Surging food prices are a major driver of domestic inflation.
- Supermarkets have been pulling in record profits, with Woolworths and Coles increasing their profit margins from 4.7% pre-pandemic to 6.1% today.
- Wages aren’t keeping up, and low-income households are hit the hardest—16.4% of their income goes to food compared with just 5.1% for high earners.
- Four out of every five shoppers think poor labelling of products makes it hard to tell if they’re getting a genuine discount.
We need real supermarket competition and stronger consumer protections
Stop anti-competitive behaviour
- Stop anti-competitive land banking, where supermarkets buy up property to block competitors from entering the market.
- Encourage new independent supermarkets by providing incentives for smaller grocery retailers to enter the market.
Impose real penalties for price-gouging
- Increase funding for the ACCC to investigate and prosecute misleading pricing and allegations of price gouging, with increased minimum penalties for breaches to deter repeat offences.
- Crack down on “shrinkflation”, where companies reduce product sizes but keep prices the same. This can be done with clearer, more consistent unit pricing and extending unit pricing requirements outside the major supermarkets, for example, into discount chain chemists.
- Require more pricing transparency, including publishing what proportion of the sale price of a product (e.g. essential items like bread, milk, and fresh produce) goes to the primary producer. This could be done in much the same way as APRA requires superannuation funds to disclose fees and investment returns.
Protect farmers with an enforceable Code of Conduct
Farmers and suppliers are unfairly treated by the major supermarkets but don’t raise concerns with the watchdog because they fear retaliation. There have been only four complaints by suppliers about the big supermarkets in the last five years.
- Make the Grocery Code of Conduct mandatory to ensure transparency and accountability throughout the supply chain and to include clear protections for suppliers who come forward with complaints.
- Guarantee minimum pricing protections for farmers, so they aren’t forced to sell produce below cost due to factors outside their control.
- Ban unfair terms in supplier contracts, like those which give supermarkets a unilateral right to alter agreements.
Launch a Royal Commission into Supermarket Power
We need a Royal Commission into Supermarket Power. The government has announced an ACCC supermarket inquiry, but it is too narrow in scope—it doesn’t have the power to uncover the full extent of anti-competitive behaviour. Just like it did with the banking industry, a Royal Commission would go deeper, investigating:
- The full impact of supermarket market concentration on food prices.
- Whether Coles and Woolworths have used inflation to unfairly raise prices.
- How widespread the use of land access, store locations, and supplier agreements is to block competition.
For years, major parties have been too afraid to take on corporate giants like Coles and Woolworths, ensuring that supermarket monopolies remain in place. It’s time to take control back from the big supermarkets and return it into the hands of consumers and farmers. We can break up monopolies, stop price gouging, and make life more affordable, but only with independent voices in parliament willing to take it on.
- As an independent, I don’t answer to big business. I answer to you.
- I will push for real reforms—not just empty inquiries that go nowhere.
- I will stand up to corporate greed and fight for a fairer, more affordable Australia.