ACCC deputy chair Mick Keogh and Victorian Farmers Federation president Emma Germano discuss the supermarket pricing inquiry.
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00:00We received the highest level of responses we've ever received to a consumer survey.
00:06So it really highlighted the significance they see in the role of supermarkets in their lives.
00:12Bob Cattery is barking up the wrong tree when it comes to supermarkets.
00:15We've got supermarkets who are making on average between 2 and 3% net profit.
00:21Is that really exorbitant?
00:23How can we talk about price gouging in this sense as if there's this absolute uproar about
00:33how expensive it is to buy things in the supermarket.
00:35So as much as I hate the supermarkets probably more than the next guy, this is bullshit.
00:41Yes, supermarkets, particularly the two majors, do have market power.
00:45Do they exercise that to the detriment of the consumers?
00:48Well, that's a legitimate question.
00:50When did you say that your findings are going to come in?
00:52Is that before or after the next federal election?
01:01Can we just simply blame Coles and Woolworths for all of that?
01:04I think that that's giving them far too much credit in regards to how much power they have over the country.
01:08We are unbelievably emotionally connected to our land and that sometimes means that you make poor business decisions.
01:14If you want to grow too many potatoes, you can expect that the potatoes are going to be really cheap
01:19and that you're going to create all of these avenues where you can be taken advantage of.
01:30The 1960 Royal Commission into the Victorian Markets, when you read it, it's describing the current market in some respects.
01:39Slightly less mafia influence, I suspect, but...
01:43Oh, they just got more sophisticated.
01:45Just to say that the end goal is cheap food, that really bothers me
01:49because here's a real easy way to make things cheaper.
01:51Let's buy it all out of South America and Asia and there you go, problem fixed.
01:54We're not actually valuing manufacturing in Australia despite that.
01:57Oh, let's do the manufacturing, woo-wee!
01:59Agriculture is still the manufacturing industry that is here right now and we're not taking care of it,
02:04but you want to start thinking about what else we can manufacture?
02:07Well, good luck, because no one can afford anyone and there's no one here to do it.
02:10Curtis Stone can tell you how to feed your family for $10 or less.
02:13I can tell you how to do it for five, right?
02:15But we don't have a mentality about how to eat like that, how to cook like that,
02:19how to purchase like that for our family.
02:21And there is just a bit of a cold hard reality, shit's expensive.