‘Gutless’ supermarket review will mean little for grocery prices and suppliers: Katter
KATTER’S Australian Party MP Bob Katter has labelled the Federal Government’s response to escalating grocery prices as “gutless,” after it failed to adopt any substantive measures following the Grocery Code of Conduct Review.
The review conducted by former Labor Minister Craig Emerson recommended the current voluntary code of conduct be made mandatory, and fines of up to $10 million be applied to supermarkets who breach their obligations to act in good faith.
Mr Katter has spoken with the Prime Minister’s office to alert him adopting this review’s recommendations and “calling the problem solved” will do little for Australians.
Mr Katter questioned the practicality of both the flagship recommendations noting that all the major supermarkets were already signatories to the voluntary code of conduct, and the fines would hardly be a deterrent.
“Firstly, the supermarkets were given the opportunity to write the code, so they got to set their own rules, and then they had already bound themselves to it. So making it ‘mandatory’ will achieve nothing,” Mr Katter said.
He said the report also recommended changes to how negotiations and dispute resolution took place between suppliers and grocers, but noted there was a huge power imbalance between the major supermarkets and the famers, who also feared retribution and deserved from the government hard legislation and protection against bad faith transactions.
As for the increased fines and penalties, Mr Katter said he like most Australians had lost faith in the country’s corporate regulators such as ACCC and ASIC to actually investigate and prosecute.
“The executives in those organisations are happily earning their $500,000-plus salaries while only 2 per cent of cases are prosecuted. In just the last 12 months in my electorate alone we’ve had multiple cases of company directors trading insolvent, accruing bad debts, winding up and then starting again and these corporate regulators are telling us there’s nothing to see there.”
Mr Katter said Australians, both suppliers and consumers of groceries deserved real government action which would increase competition in the supermarket sector as well as create parity between what a farmer is paid, and what a customer pays.
In March he introduced his Reducing Supermarket Dominance Bill, which was rejected by the major parties, however broadly supported by the crossbench.
The bill would have introduced forced divestment of the supermarkets down to 20 per cent share each over a period of five years and introduced a 100 per cent maximum market up on produce from the farmgate to retail shelf.
