Queensland inquiry to probe effects to unfair pricing practices
An inquiry into price gouging in Australia has begun in the far north Queensland city of Cairns. It's part of a series of hearings commissioned by the Australian council of trade unions examining a range of industries, including banks and supermarkets.
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00:00 The prize gouging inquiry aims to examine the rising cost of living and the roles that
00:06 big corporations are playing.
00:09 It's being run by the ACTU and headed up by Professor Alan Fells, the former boss of the
00:14 Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
00:17 The inquiry has been held in Melbourne and Adelaide so far and today moved to the tropical
00:22 city of Cairns, the only regional centre in the country to host the hearing.
00:27 The Queensland Council of Unions General Secretary Jacqueline King said the goal of the inquiry
00:33 was to determine what had caused prices to rise so significantly over the past year.
00:39 People are doing it tough, low income people are doing it very, very tough.
00:44 So we can imagine what pensioners are feeling.
00:46 We also know that middle income wage earners are also doing it tough.
00:50 So it's really about collecting those stories, hearing about I guess the additional kind
00:56 of impact of, you know, is there additional transportation costs that is driving prices
01:01 higher in Cairns but also in the communities and what other factors kind of are in that space.
01:09 Today the inquiry heard from a wide range of people, including a resident from Cape York
01:14 who spoke about how he's paying $19 for a kilogram for mints and $2.87 a litre for diesel.
01:21 Retired Cairns nurse Anne Kreger also gave evidence at the inquiry outside the hearing.
01:27 She spoke of how she has gone through her savings over the past year.
01:32 I used to be able to save money regularly for non-essentials if you like and I'm finding
01:38 that savings just completely depleted over the last year.
01:44 So I'm finding I'm straight, as a single person who owns their own little unit, I've got the
01:50 ongoing costs of that with a buddy corporate but I'm really, I've hit, there's no non-essentials
01:57 anymore and all those bills are going up all the time.
02:01 None of the big four banks have given evidence or the supermarket giants and have not indicated
02:07 that they will do so in the future.
02:09 The inquiry moves to Sydney tomorrow.
02:11 A report will be made public at the end of the hearings.
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