The consumer watchdog has found people have lost trust in the major supermarkets. The ACCC has been looking at Coles and Woolworths' market power and the barriers faced by competitors in the sector. The interim report covers prices along with unfair practices towards suppliers and competition.
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00:00Well, this report is 300 pages almost, but it doesn't make any specific recommendations
00:08or findings yet as an interim inquiry.
00:12As you mentioned, it looks at pricing and has found, as you'd understand, that consumers
00:17believe that prices are too high.
00:20It also raises concerns from suppliers that they are being squeezed by the major supermarkets
00:27and it looks at the market share of the major supermarkets, including Coles and Woolworths.
00:34Here is the Deputy Chair of the ACCC speaking specifically about those two companies this
00:41morning.
00:42They have 67% market share of supermarket grocery sales and certainly the observation
00:49is that they behave in an oligopolistic fashion, in other words, not trying to compete too
00:55strongly and mirroring practices and that's not a good outcome if that's the case for
01:03consumers.
01:04So that will be a real focus of our inquiry going forward.
01:06Well, the major supermarkets have seen this report and as you'd expect, Cath, they have
01:12come out today saying that they believe that they are offering consumers competitive prices.
01:18We have Coles and Woolworths both saying that they support diverse, robust and competitive
01:23supermarket retail settings.
01:26We've also had some reaction to this interim report by the Consumer Watchdog by the former
01:31Chair of the ACCC, Graeme Samuel.
01:34He actually says that this is quite a disappointing interim report.
01:39He believes that the most interesting things to come out of it are around things like land
01:44banking, that is when companies buy up sites and essentially sit on them and stop other
01:51companies coming into their regions to compete with them.
01:55Here is Graeme Samuel just this morning speaking about the interim report put out this morning.
02:00I have to say I'm a bit disappointed.
02:03The ACCC has been conducting this inquiry since February this year and it actually doesn't
02:08tell us anything that a very superficial knowledge of the industry would have you knowing.
02:14Yes, we've got dominance of Coles and Woolworths.
02:16Well, nothing terribly revealing about that.
02:19They've got 60 odd percent of the market share.
02:23Aldi has grown in its presence.
02:25You've got Costco growing in its presence.
02:28They talk about Metcash and the IGA outlets as being really not very competitive.
02:34We said that back in 2008.
02:36Well, we know that the ACCC is only in the early stages of this inquiry and this is just
02:43an interim report.
02:44They say that they've requested five years of pricing information off the major supermarkets
02:51and they now have around 60,000 documents to sift over.
02:56They will also be calling the bosses of the supermarkets before their inquiry.
03:03That's expected for November before the final report is put out next year.
03:07It is worth noting that these bosses of supermarkets have already fronted many other inquiries
03:13that have been put forward in this year.
03:17We know that, for instance, we have the Emerson inquiry into the Grocery Code of Conduct and
03:23that this means that this grocery code is now set to become mandatory.
03:28We also know that this ACCC inquiry that's going on at the moment was prompted by the
03:33federal government as we have had so much rage against the supermarkets from consumers
03:39amid a cost of living crisis.
03:41Here is the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, speaking this morning about the ACCC's interim
03:46report.
03:48People in this electorate are out there looking for bargains, looking for specials, looking
03:53for value.
03:55It is a breach of trust for supermarkets to be behaving like this.
04:00And today we've released the ACCC interim report, again indicating that supermarkets
04:07need to do better and indicating the ACCC's concern at what they regard as a virtual oligopoly
04:15when it comes to supermarkets.
04:17We want to make sure that supermarkets deliver value and that consumers are looked after,
04:24which is why we are mandating the Code of Conduct, unlike the former government that
04:30had a voluntary code.
04:32It is worth noting that the ACCC has put out its interim report into supermarkets.
04:38In the same week that it's also lodged action against the two biggest players, Coles and
04:42Woolworths, it's alleging that the supermarkets have been inflating the prices of groceries
04:50to then discount them to give what they say and allege is the illusion of better deals
04:55to consumers.
04:57The ACCC says that its investigations into those practices was actually going on before
05:03it was asked by the federal government to step in and look at this separate interim
05:07report.
05:09As I mentioned, that interim report is just released this morning and we expect the final
05:13one to come out next year.